


World Enough and Time

by saizine



Category: Whitechapel (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-25
Updated: 2014-01-25
Packaged: 2018-01-09 21:29:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 43,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1150986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saizine/pseuds/saizine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It took Kent eight months to realise they’d never been on a date. Not that he was bothered.</p><p>(Companion piece to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/961385/chapters/1883967">A Fine and Private Place</a>.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written between November 2013 and January 2014.
> 
> Possible spoilers: Assumes knowledge of series 1-3. References some character-related information gained in the course of series 4 but disregards actual events/cases.
> 
> Thank you so, so, so much to the lovely **timethetalewastold** for beta'ing this and doing such a brilliant job, too! 
> 
> Plus, I have to say thank you so much to the community at large as well, for being so lovely and supportive and absolutely cracking. I hope this addition to AFAPP's verse doesn't disappoint!
> 
> Title borrowed, again, from Andrew Marvell's 'To His Coy Mistress.'

  
 

 

It should have annoyed Kent more that he could hear the music blaring from one of the nearby cars parked at street level, but it didn’t. It sounded like something vaguely reminiscent of the mid-nineties, based on what he could gather from the bassline, but the intricacies were muffled by too many walls for him to place it definitively. Instead he leant forward, hugging his knees closer to his chest, just to see if he could pick out which car it was.

Until he realised exactly how ridiculous that idea was and slumped back against the pillows with a sigh, staring at the ceiling.

It was one of those nights.

Chandler stirred beside him, just a light twitch of his limbs that Kent had long ago learnt to recognize. He wasn’t going to wake, there wasn’t enough movement to prophesize that, but Kent turned his head to watch him anyway—just in case. Even though it had been eight months, even though he was allowed Kent still felt more comfortable like this, letting his eyes linger on Chandler’s features when he didn’t know. He’d never seen anyone look worried in their sleep before, not those first few times, but Chandler somehow managed it. (He would, wouldn’t he?) It took a few more sleepless nights and a little more daring on Kent’s part but he eventually understood. Chandler’s face might have betrayed his mind, but the limp trust of his limbs suggested the opposite just as much. 

The wind caught one of the trees outside the window, sending weak moonlight dappling across the rucked sheets and the spread of Chandler’s shoulder. His hand curled around the corner of Kent’s pillow, unconsciously searching him out; for a moment Kent wondered how he could get back to where they’d begun the night, with Chandler’s arm wrapped around his middle with a determination that still sent a flush of warmth down Kent’s back, but there was no way to do it without waking him. And Kent never did that unless he had to, not if he could help it, so instead he laid back and tried to focus on the brush of Chandler’s fingertips against the cap of his shoulder.

That was the one thing about these sleepless hours that he appreciated more, now—it was easier to sit through it when he was nestled in his bed with the radiator on one side and Chandler on the other. It was much more difficult to panic when he could feel Chandler’s steady breathing under his arm, or his heartbeat thick and alive against Kent’s skin. Only small things, really, virtually negligible, but… it helped.

Kent shifted under the covers, the summer night air just muggy enough to be uncomfortable. They never seemed to get around to switching from the winter duvet, either, and as much as the thought itself still felt amazingly domestic it wasn’t enough to keep the discontented huff away from Kent’s mouth. He didn’t have many of these nights anymore, just the occasional one when he woke up with his skin crawling and a terrible feeling that he couldn’t possibly catch enough breath. He wouldn’t mind, perhaps, if he stayed like that—at least that particular reaction he can do something about. He’d rather have that than the shot of relief that inevitably gave way to the vague annoyance at still being awake. It was as if the bloody feeling was out to get him, leaving him high and dry after a cruel joke.

It got less vague as Kent pushed himself back up on an elbow and grabbed at his phone on the bedside table, careful not to jostle Chandler, and noticed the time. _Shit_ —less than three hours before they were due in. He was really setting himself up for a terrible day full of terrible coffee and (most likely) a terrible headache. Chandler would probably try and get him to something about it, try vainly to convince him to come in an hour later than normal because they haven’t got a case on. It wouldn’t work—it never has—but the thought brought a pleased smile to Kent’s face nonetheless.

(It still felt like a revelation each time Chandler did it.) 

But he might not be able to tell at all—Kent was good at hiding it, just pushing it to one side and soldiering on. It wasn’t even terribly out of character for him to be up before Chandler; he’d only know without a doubt if he woke in the midst of it, and Kent wouldn’t have thought that was likely judging from the depth of his breathing. Sometimes he preferred it like this, sitting up alone in consciousness but not in body. Other times he’d prefer to get up and out completely, eliminate the risk of accidentally elbowing Chandler in the face or tossing and turning for hours, but Chandler had never slept through that particular manoeuvre. The man seemed to have a talent for knowing when Kent was gone, even if he’d still been asleep when he’d crept out—and they both had to be at work in the morning. 

Once or twice, though, he had woken with a start to find Chandler watching him, eyes awake with concern as if he’d been keeping track of the outward manifestations of a troublesome dream; those were the times he was glad for the dry press of lips to his forehead, the hushed words that didn’t really mean anything in themselves except as proof that Chandler was there, that Kent wasn’t sat in an empty house watching out over an empty street.

Kent was still surprised at how much that meant to him. 

There was a pause in the music, a sudden enveloping of the thick silence of night, and Kent heaved himself up again for a proper look out the window. Not for any particular reason, just because he might as well, and he only realised he’d been holding his breath when the noise started up again in a slightly different tune. Kent turned away, trying to place this one as well, but his mouth quirked into a smile out of its own accord as he rested his chin against his knees.

He was an idiot, wasn’t he? What the hell was he doing—testing his music trivia knowledge?

(He might as well, there was talk of another pub quiz and last time Buchan had crushed them all with a surprisingly widespread familiarity with noughties pop anthems.)

Chandler snuffled again, a little more insistently. Kent stilled; Chandler wasn’t anywhere near wakefulness yet, but he paused his movements just in case. He honestly didn’t want to bother Chandler with this, not when the main problem he had at that moment was the temporary inability to sleep and nothing more, but there was something about the way he’d just shifted towards his side that compelled Kent to reach out, to brush his fingers across the curve of his shoulder. The touch went unnoticed, although Chandler’s skin was a pleasant familiar warmth even in the summer nights, and Kent trailed his hand towards Chandler’s face. He could read the remnants of the last case in his expression, the frown lines that never quite go, the smudges of grey under his eyes. Kent knew he’d kept the evidence of it too, written across his face, but he couldn’t carry it as well as Chandler. Kent ran a thumb across Chandler’s cheekbone—he might even have described it as aristocratic—but flinched back as the man in question stirred with a slight sigh. Chandler scrunched up his nose at the gentle contact but didn’t wake. Kent smiled down at him through the blue depth of night, stroked at his jaw for a moment longer until the screeching sound of tires rung out from a few streets away and he recoiled for a second time, brought back to the reality of the situation and the need for at least some modicum of sleep before the shift.

He didn’t bother closing the curtain from where he’d tugged it slightly open. The morning light would make getting up easier, at the very least. Instead he flipped his pillow over to the cool side and settled along the line of Chandler’s body, gradually resting an arm across the base of his ribs. He curled it closer in a loose embrace as Chandler just went on sleeping, and Kent sighed as his attempts to get comfortable gave way to the uncomfortable feeling of being very much awake.

But there wasn’t much he could do about that. 

The beat still thrummed through the quiet of the street, but Kent welcomed it as he dropped a kiss to the inside of Chandler’s shoulder and drew himself as close as he dared. Even if he didn’t get back to sleep, even if he had to work the next shift on only a handful of hours of rest, he would enjoy this: the warmth of Chandler’s knee against his, the mismatched thump of their hearts, the gentle rise and fall of his chest that said, _yes, we’re here._

*

‘Have a nice morning, did you?’ 

Kent looked up from where he was stirring milk into his coffee to find Riley approaching with a wide grin. He couldn’t possibly see where she’d got that idea from; even though he had managed to salvage an hour, he didn’t feel particularly well rested. He’d be all right after the coffee, though, if she’d just give him a chance to drink it. 

‘What gives you that impression?’ he asked as she came to a stop beside him and flicked on the kettle.

Riley shrugged, overly casual and far too pleased to be safe. ‘A talent for keen observation.’

‘Right,’ Kent said, holding the spoon out of the way as he raised the mug to his mouth. ‘You do know I can tell where this is going, don’t you?' 

‘Of course I do. It doesn’t make it less fun.’

‘Oh, God, you’re all children,’ he muttered, more to his coffee than anyone else, but Riley chuckled anyway. ‘Isn’t there a cold case we can pour over, or something?’

‘Probably, but that would involve going to find one.’

He shot her an unimpressed look, but even he couldn’t stop from agreeing with her with a slight chuckle. Maybe if it had been the first day they’d had without a case, they’d have been more likely to be bothered. But it wasn’t and they’d already exhausted all the paperwork that they’d been putting off from the last few cases, and even Chandler had run out of forms to fill in. Kent knew he’d come up with something—he always did, even if they ended up stuck giving the incident room a deep clean (and, in fact, it was in need of one)—and there was no need for them all to overexert themselves trying to decide which of the boxes of cold cases was most pressing.

Riley glanced back over at him as she dropped a teabag into her mug, the kettle bubbling more insistently. ‘I never thought I’d see the day when the boss ended up domestic.’

Kent frowned in confusion. ‘I don’t think you have.’

‘No, no, I definitely have,’ she said, chuckling and gesturing at the length of him with a teaspoon. ‘You’re walking proof.’

He sighed—no, deflated, more like. ‘Not this again.’

Kent would have thought that after _eight bleeding_ _months_ they’d have got tired of teasing him about Chandler. Clearly that had been a very, very optimistic thought, because if anything they all just seemed to enjoy it even more.

‘Oh, come on.’ Riley nudged his shoulder as she went to pick up the kettle. ‘It’s obvious you two have had a cosy morning.’

He couldn’t really deny that, not really. They had, despite everything. That was probably why he found it relatively easy to get out of bed after slipping back into sleep; even he couldn’t resist the gentle press of lips from a shower-warmed Chandler, the offer of tea and toast. Morning sunlight had streamed in as well, unflinchingly bright and the look Chandler had shot him when he stretched, back arched upwards away from the mattress, was enough to bring a pleased smile to his face.

(The flush that had crept up the back of Chandler’s neck once he realised Kent had noticed brought a wider one, too, but all he’d done about that was slide out of bed to kiss that anxious mouth before retiring to the bathroom himself.)

‘How on earth can you tell?’ 

‘We always know.’ She waggled her eyebrows before turning to press the teabag against the side of the now-full mug.

Kent watched her do it, stunned. ‘I’ll say it again: _how_?’

‘Today? The way your tie's tied,’ she said, her entire demeanor matter of fact, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. She wafted a hand in the general direction of his neck, wiggling her fingers. ‘I don't think you're enough of a nutter to bother with an trinity knot.’

‘What?’ Kent asked, trying to look down to see what she was talking about but failing miserably. 

(He didn’t even know what a trinity knot _was_ , let alone how to tie one.)

‘Didn't you even look at yourself before you came in today?’

Kent couldn't say that he had. And he hadn't wondered about the length of time it had taken Chandler to do his tie, either, but she was right. Even if he couldn’t see it, a quick tug at his shirt collar told him that yes, that was a more complicated knot than he’d attempt. The flush arrived of its own accord not long after, hot across the back of his neck.

Riley looked as if she was having difficulty smothering a delighted smile. ‘You're going to have a bit of trouble getting that off tonight.’

He groaned and shot her a look that should have been deprecating but she returned it by smiling wider.

‘Oh, sod off,’ Kent said, though there was a little bit of a laugh behind it too.

(Riley didn’t miss it.)

‘I’ve tried,’ she said, accompanied by an unapologetic pat to his shoulder, ‘but I just can’t do it. You two are precious.’

Kent pulled a face, though she laughed it off with a shake of her head as she tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. 

‘Don’t let him hear you saying that,’ he added, as a bit of an afterthought, as the still-too-hot coffee stung his tongue.

A familiar voice appeared from somewhere beyond Riley’s elbow. ‘Who?’ 

Riley adopted a look of absolute innocence that she threw haphazardly in the boss’s direction as he approached, his own mug in hand. Kent rolled his eyes; there was no way that would fool him. Maybe that wasn’t the point; either way, it was a bit ridiculous. 

‘Oh, no one in particular, sir.’

‘Really?’

‘Of course,’ she said,

She swooped away with her tea, and although Kent couldn’t see her face from where he stood, he knew she was grinning.

‘Right,’ Chandler said slowly, letting it go although they all knew what they were talking about.

He looked amused nonetheless as Kent passed him the box of green tea without a word. They were used to it by now, and it was always a bit more concentrated when they didn’t have a case on. On particularly quiet patches even Miles got in on it, much to Chandler’s chagrin. He’d been mortified about it at first, of course, the blush was almost perpetual, but overexposure had suppressed even his hair-trigger reactions. Occasionally they’d conspire to get in on it, to poke back, but each and every one of those plans had either been derailed by a case or by a particularly well-timed kiss that devolved their minds into something else entirely.

‘Miles not in yet?' 

‘Hmm?’ Kent looked up from where he’d been regarding the liquid in his mug, trying to judge its temperature. ‘Oh, no. He rang, though. Says his youngest boy’s come down with something rough, he’ll be in a bit late.’

Kent couldn’t help but find way Chandler wrinkled his nose at the thought as he poured the boiling water endearing. 

‘Shall I send him through when he arrives, sir?’ he asked, turning back to his drink as he waited for a response.

(He might as well, it was a slow morning after all and there wasn’t much else to do. He didn’t miss Riley’s small glances either, the smothered grins from the safety of her desk, and had to force himself not to scowl in her direction. It was too early for all of this. At least they had some time before Miles barged in; they were overdue one of his comments, it’d been two weeks and Kent was getting more and more antsy about when it was going to come forth. Knowing their luck it would probably be at a crime scene, in front of an impressionable tech who hadn’t already learnt to assume that their banter was all lies. 

Chandler turned to him with a bemused smile. ‘You’re not a receptionist, Emer—’

‘Not interrupting anything, am I?’

Kent heaved another heavy sigh as Mansell approached, his arms spread wide in a faux-warm greeting. (He’d really not had enough coffee for this.) The suggestion dripped from his voice, underlined by the cheeky smile that never seemed to go, and if he’d have been anyone else Kent would have just shoved a two-fingered salute in his face and walked off. But no, he was a _professional_ , and this was his workplace. 

There were a hundred retorts that he could use, like _Couldn’t you get your coat off, first?_ or _Do you fucking mind?_ but what came out was offhand and perhaps a little bit short.

‘Would you prefer it if you were?’ 

Chandler shot him a bit of a panicked look, just for a moment, but the question did its job: Mansell came to a stop in front of them, mouth not quite as smiling as it had started.

Kent didn’t stop the smirk that grew the longer Mansell stood there, looking between them both stuck for words. Chandler went a bit pink in the interim as he turned back to his brewing tea, but even if Mansell didn’t turn a similar shade of red Kent could tell he’d stopped him in his tracks. He hadn’t expected that particular response, not when they’ve both been oscillating between being retiring about it and telling them off. 

‘Not laughing now, are we?’ Kent asked, teasing and not entirely without a chuckle himself, as he walked off leaving them both a bit stunned.

(Well, it was about time someone did it.)

Mansell’s bumbling half-amused, half-mollified apologies to Chandler followed Kent back to his desk; a quick glance behind over his shoulder told him that, for all of Chandler’s stern expression, there was amusement there too.

*

Kent’s phone went after lunch, and when he saw the name pop up on his screen he swore underneath his breath.

(Mark never had a knack for good timing.)

He let the mobile ring out, safely switched to vibrate and stowed in the inside pocket of his jacket, until it stilled and he could ignore it in favour of getting a little bit further on proofreading the reports from the last case they’d worked. It may have been a quiet day but he still wasn’t strictly supposed to be taking personal calls; why couldn’t he have rung twenty minutes earlier? 

It was only when he’d read a sentence three times and not taken it in that Kent reckoned he should probably just call back and get it over and done with. Otherwise he’d just sit there, hyperaware of the fact his phone was buzzing every now and then to remind him of the missed call. Once Riley had looked up from her desk, slightly confused, and mouthed ‘Your chest’s vibrating,’ to him from the opposite side of the room. He’d just rolled his eyes and mouthed back ‘I know.’ Then her eyes had pointedly flicked to the boss’ office and he’d not hesitated to raise two fingers in her direction while Skip was looking the other way. Her peal of laughter broke the quiet of the incident room, and even Chandler had looked up from where he’d been engrossed in a file to glance at them all, one by one, trying to find out what had gone on.

Kent had chuckled to himself— _good luck with that_. He didn’t know, either.

In the end he’d waited until Riley had swanned off down to the archives under the pretense of following up on those missing files from the sixties and Mansell had tried to surreptitiously pocket a packet of cigarettes, winking at them all in way of explanation. If they were all getting away with that then a five minute phone call wouldn’t hurt. It sounded like Chandler was having a terse conversation of his own, complete with the frustrated muttering that always came when he was put on hold, and Miles had retreated behind a paper now he was finished barking half-arsed orders at everyone. Kent locked his computer screen and stretched before getting to his feet, grabbing at the jacket on the back of his chair as he went.

‘And just where do you think you’re going?’

Kent stopped, turned on his heel; Miles had flipped the top half of his newspaper down in an uncanny impression of virtually every cheap television PI. All he needed was a dimly lit office and imitation mahogany blinds. 

‘Got to return a call, Skip.’ 

‘Out there?’ Miles nodded towards the door with an arched brow. ‘You’ve a phone on your desk, you know.’

‘Personal.’

‘If I didn’t know any better, I’d tell you to stop ringing your boyfriend.’

Kent sighed, shook his head. ‘And _there_ it is.’ 

Miles just grinned and returned his paper to the usual position. ‘You know me too well.’

‘You haven’t got him yet,’ Kent said, nodding in Chandler’s direction.

(He was back to his laptop now, but still shooting disgruntled glances at his phone. Not a successful call, then. Evidently all activity that was going on in the capital at that moment was entirely above board—that didn’t bode well for them, did it?)

‘Don’t get your hopes up,’ Miles said, cryptic. ‘I will.’

‘I’ll warn him.’

There was a rusty chuckle, then: ‘That won’t matter. I’ll still enjoy it.’

Kent shook his head, half-smiling.

‘God, we need a case.’

*

The scarred doors of the station slammed shut behind Kent’s back as he walked into the sunny car park, making a bee line for the same spot he’d been using for quiet moments and unofficial phone conversations ever since he’d arrived at Whitechapel. It hadn’t been easy, when he’d first come back, _after_ , but in the end it was the only place in the concreted area where he couldn’t see where he’d broken down next to a donkey (no one had ever explained that, actually, but Kent supposed that had been the least of their problems) and standing in it had been easier than looking at it. It also happened to be one of the few places with a reliable connection, strangely enough, even with the brick wall. Somewhere more open would make more sense, but his internet radio always used to drop when he walked over the Thames and there were no better open, unobstructed places in London.

Bloody networks.

Kent unlocked his phone, flicking through his contacts until he found Mark’s name, and held the phone to his ear just as a group of PCs tumbled through the same door he’d just come through, fumbling at their pockets for lighters. The shrill ringing overtook the low tone of their conversation, though judging from the boisterous laughter Kent knew he’d be better off not knowing. 

As soon as the familiar click sounded in his ear, he said, ‘It’s only me, mate.’

(Mark would know.)

‘Yeah, hold on a moment—’ There was a scuffling on the end, a low bark, then a distant thump and a scuffling of claws against a floor. Mark sighed, chuckling, then picked up the phone again. ‘Right, okay. Hello. What took you so long?’

‘I’m on duty, Mark.’ Kent made a point of glancing at his watch even though he was stood there on his own. ‘You’re lucky we’re bored out of our minds or my sergeant wouldn’t have let me out of the incident room at all.’ 

‘Ooh-err.’ The chesty chuckle that’s always been one of Mark’s defining characteristics rumbled over the line. ‘I won’t ask.’

‘What were you calling about, then? I know you, you don’t call up just wanting a natter. You need a pint for that.’

‘Two pints, mate. I’ve not forgotten what you owe me.’ There was a bark, and Mark shushed the dog to comic extent. ‘It’s about the wedding.’

‘Please say you don’t need me to officiate.’

Mark whistled. ‘ _That’s_ an idea.’

‘I need to learn to keep my mouth shut around you.’ Kent faux-groaned but it soon turned into a chuckle. 

‘How’s it going, then? Still shacked up with that guy?’

‘Ha ha, Mark.’ Kent could virtually taste the sarcasm. ‘You know I am.’

Mark and Jess had been the first ones to find out after the rest of the team—and, typically, it had been entirely by accident. The night Mark had proposed, Jess had promptly rung Kent to shout abuse at him (loving, happy abuse) for keeping his mouth shut for so long (what had she expected? He was a _policeman_ , after all), but instead of getting Kent on the end of the line she’d got a groggy, half-asleep Chandler. There really were lots of problems that came from both of them having the same model of phone, it seemed. In any case, her pitch just got louder when Chandler realised his mistake and handed the phone over. 

The next time Kent had spoken to Mark, he’d replied to his ‘You replaced me pretty quickly,’ with an offhand, ‘Well, I never shagged you, did I?’ and it had taken five minutes for the other man to stop laughing. Then that was that, Chandler’s name had just been another in their list. Chandler always gave Kent funny looks when he said they say hello, though; Kent didn’t blame him. His friends could sometimes take a little getting used to. 

‘Anyway, the wedding. Thought I’d ring and invite you formally. Or informally, whatever this turns out to be, I’ve got no idea. Jess just leaves me a to-do list and I do it. You’re on today’s, as you might expect.’

Kent scoffed. ‘Flatterer.’

‘You should be flattered; she sends her love.’

‘Ta.’

‘I’ll tell her that, shall I?’ Mark sounded amused.

Kent grinned at nothing. ‘Probably should.’ 

(He missed them, a bit. Familiar faces, and that.)

‘Anyway, we’ve got a date. Thought we’d let you know early. You Londoners are sodding awkward, after all.’ 

‘Oi!’ Kent said, too overly affronted to be serious. ‘You were one of us once.’

‘Ah, but I’m a country boy at heart. Why else would I spent all afternoon in a muddy field trying to chase after a greyhound for no apparent reason at all?’

There was more scuffling in the background and a slight rhythmic thump that suggested even their new house was a little too small for a greyhound with an enthusiastically wagging tail. Kent couldn’t help but imagine the last time Mark had tried to run in wellies—he’d ended up with a sprained ankle and a considerably bruised ego. He and Jess had had a right laugh about it and ever since then Mark had insisted on ruining a perfectly good pair of trainers every time he faced muddy ground. That must have been getting expensive by now.

‘Nah, that’s just all excess energy. You’ll come to your senses eventually. Or break one of your legs, whatever comes first.’ Kent paused as Mark made a vaguely annoyed sound—they’d never let him forget—and he watched a pigeon peck at nothing on the concrete steps nearby before asking, ‘When is it, then?’

‘Twentieth of August.’ 

Kent raised his eyebrows regardless of whether or not anyone could see him. ‘That’s quick.’ 

‘No point fannying about. You know us, practical until the cows come home.’ Kent scoffed and kicked at some loose gravel around his feet as Mark made a sarcastic noise. ‘That, and the fact the place we wanted either had that date or September next year.’

‘Well, that must have settled it then.’

‘Will you be gracing us with your presence, then?’

‘Barring any suspicious deaths in our area, yes.’

Mark laughed, the gruffness of it emphasized by the slightly dodgy line. ‘Aren’t you pleasant.’

‘You got much worse than that when you lived with me.’ 

‘Don’t remind me. I was not expecting to come into the kitchen to find you quite happily eating jam on toast— _raspberry_ jam—pouring over crime scene pictures.’ 

Kent chuckled; he could still recall the horrified look on Mark’s face. ‘Even I have to admit that was an unfortunate coincidence.’

The rumble of an engine growled from behind one of the station’s interior walls, and Kent flattened himself against the brick as the car appeared around the closest corner. Brushing the dust from his shoulder, he scowled at the boot as it drove off; he knew the car, though, and resisted the urge to swear. DI Palmer, Criminal Finance, bit of a bastard. Even Chandler was reluctant to bring him in to consult on cases, and he was usually civil with everyone. He hadn’t even shot Miles a stern look when he’d muttered something suitably disparaging the last time they’d seen him out of the incident room, and that was virtually an endorsement. Kent didn’t want to end up chatting to him on his way back in. He was an overly talkative sort of man.

Mark continued on through the pause. ‘Think you’ll survive a weekend out in the country?’ 

‘You can’t get worse mobile reception than in central London, so yeah, probably,’ Kent said, watching Palmer get out of his car and—thankfully—head for the other entrance.

‘Bring that bloke of yours,’ Mark said, offhand and judging by the sound, switching to holding the phone with his shoulder.

Kent grinned at the crack in the concrete at next to his left foot; he’d never thought of Chandler as _his_ , not really, but there was something about other people referring to him that way. But even as he thought it there was an inkling of doubt crawling at the base of his ribs—they weren’t each others, were they? Not in public. Not even in Somerset at a wedding in a place where their faces didn’t ring any bells. As much as Kent would like to—and he would, he really, really would—they couldn’t. He hadn’t really thought of it as a problem; Kent was happy with Chandler in his house, all warm smiles and firm kisses and a gentle press of skin in the middle of the night. He hadn’t _wanted_ until there was a reason to. The rational part of him told him to shut up, there was nothing he could do; it didn’t entirely quell the uncomfortable lurch that Kent immediately regretted experiencing. 

‘I’m—well, I’m not sure that’s a good idea.’ It sounded weak even as he said so, so Kent cleared his throat and pressed on regardless. ‘Actually, I’m not sure he’d want to.’

‘Ask him anyway. There’s always room.’ 

Kent made a sound he hoped didn’t seem too reluctant. ‘We’ll see.’

‘Ah, well, if he can’t come, bring that Maggie,’ Mark said, too bright to be anything but appeasing. ‘She’s always a laugh.’

‘And she’s in Birmingham, if you’ve forgotten.’

Mark laughed as if that small detail was irrelevant. ‘From the few times I’ve met her, even I know she’ll get on a train for an open bar.’ 

Kent scoffed and shook his head at the nearby pigeon. ‘What a gleaming character analysis.’

‘Can’t deny it, though, can you?’

Kent chuckled; no, he couldn’t. If there was one reliable fact about Maggie, it was that. Everything else, from her taste in music to the colour of her hair, was liable to change from one month to the next; her appreciation for a good bottle of spirit, Twinings (and _only_ Twinings) Earl Grey and the poetry of Thomas Hardy were the singular constants. Singular oddities, maybe, but when you’re faced with teal hair one week and purple the next (she’d really been trying to get on their head teacher’s nerves) it was nothing in comparison.  

‘You’ll have all this in writing once Jess’ decided on the invitation,’ Mark continued, taking Kent’s silence as evidence of assent. ‘Which, let’s be honest, could take years.’

‘How many options are we on now?' 

(Last Kent had heard, it had been fourteen. Mark couldn’t even tell the difference between most of them.)

Mark gave an overdone sigh. ‘Five.’ 

‘That’s better.’

‘Marginally.’ Mark’s heavy sigh was all put on. ‘It’s all paper to me,’ he continued, pausing for a short chuckle. ‘I bet your fella would know what she’s on about, though, wouldn’t he? Mister Montblanc.’ 

Kent wished he’d never mentioned it. Then again, during those early days, he’d said a lot. Enough for Mark to suspect and, later on, for Jess to guess. He was rather sure that Miles had put the pieces together too, quietly through all the changes to the team and all their cases. He was that sort of man. Sometimes Kent wondered about how insistent Skip had been that Kent put Chandler up when that pipe went, but each time he arrived at the conclusion that it didn’t matter how it happened, or why, only that it did. (Oh, it _did_.) 

‘I doubt it,’ Kent said in reply, clearing his throat. ‘All the paper he uses is the shit the Met keeps in the print room.’

Mark makes a mocking sound, low and overdone. ‘Careful, don’t give away all the government secrets.’ 

‘Well, if anyone would like to pop in and nick the massive oversupply of carbon copy paper, we’d be most appreciative.’

‘Speaking of, aren’t you supposed to be on duty?’ 

‘Are you implying that I spend all my days pushing paper around?’

(Kent knew he did faux-affronted well. He practiced it enough, with those supposedly charming idiots he worked with.) 

‘You wouldn’t be on the phone with me if you had a suspect to chase.’

It was actually surprising how many suspects they did have to literally chase. When he’d first joined up he’d thought that was a thing off the telly, but no, it wasn’t. The police fitness tests weren’t joking, and neither were the bruises when he got those, either.

‘I’ll have you know I can run and talk at the same time,’ Kent joked as he glanced around the bricked corner back to the front doors, half expecting to find Miles’ scowl behind one of the glass panels. ‘I’d best get back in before my sergeant comes out to kill me.’

Mark chuckled, and Kent could just imagine him shaking his head at the dog. ‘On your head be it.’

* 

Kent struggled his way into consciousness only to find that the allure of sleep wasn’t entirely gone. 

One of those days, then. _Evenings_ , he corrected. If he forced himself up now, he’d probably be able to sleep later. He got as far as making the decision to stay awake, and maybe even to brace himself for that awful software update on his phone the Met’s been insisting on, before he realised where he’d fallen asleep.

He was lying on the sofa between Chandler’s thighs, the back of his head resting in the furrow between Chandler’s hip and leg. The position was surprisingly comfortable, although Kent had no idea how they’d ever managed to arrange themselves in such as way. There wasn’t really the room for the both of them on his slightly useless old furniture, but it seemed to have worked well enough. Before he’d really managed to process the situation, Chandler’s back was bowed as he leant over him, the book in his hands temporarily forgotten.

‘Hello.’

Kent blinked up at him, comfortably warm, and settled for a slow smile. ‘Hello.’

Chandler returned his attention to his book, but somehow managed to balance the wide spine in one palm in order to card a gentle hand through Kent’s hair. He sighed, smiled; after a moment Kent turned his head to press his mouth to the inside of Chandler’s wrist as he trailed touch over his neck and shoulder. He pressed his nose to the skin and muscle as Chandler let his hand settle somewhere over Kent’s heart.

‘What time is it?’

Chandler didn’t even need to look at his watch. ‘Quarter past nine.’

‘Shit,’ Kent muttered, raising a hand to rub at his eyes. ‘Why’d you let me fall asleep?’

There was a sigh, and the slightly awkward turning of a page, then: ‘You seemed like you needed it.’

Kent stilled, then stretched his neck to look up at Chandler with a furrowed brow. ‘You didn’t wake up.’

That was enough; Chandler knew what he meant. This wasn’t the first time they’d had this conversation, although it was the first in a while. No matter how many times they went through it, they always reached the same conclusion: Kent didn’t think there was anything to worry about, it was only a couple of nights every so often, but Chandler was always a little bit concerned, a little anxious.

For a moment all Kent could feel was the thump of his heart against the edge of Chandler’s palm, one focal point against the entire world. 

‘No,’ Chandler said with a sigh as he met Kent’s eye. ‘I can still tell, though. When you've not slept.’

Kent felt an inexplicable urge to apologise, for some unknown reason, but he knew Chandler would never accept it so he kept his mouth shut. Instead he hummed, a quiet acknowledgement, and didn’t make any move to get up. He was comfortable, after all, and Chandler still had a way to go with that Gibbon book.

(He’d been chipping away at it for ages. Kent didn’t even know why he owned the thing in the first place, really, but Chandler had taken a shine to it. It’d come up a lot at school, apparently, and he’d thought he should probably get around to reading it. Why he wanted to bother with the fall of Rome was another mystery of Chandler’s, but one that Kent was happy to ponder for as long as he liked.)

When Chandler retrieved his hand to turn another page Kent heaved himself into a sitting position, glancing down at his rumpled shirt with a slightly irked expression, and rubbed at his face again. Naps really were more trouble than they were worth; he didn’t even feel that refreshed. Getting to his feet turned into a slightly stumbling occasion, as well; disentangling his limbs from the remnants of whatever sleep he’d been in was more always more problematic than he expected. He still appreciated the gentle steadying hand on his hip even if he didn’t strictly need it, the slight squeeze of Chandler’s fingers around his side as he turned to face him. When Kent found Chandler watching him instead of the words on the page he didn’t try to resist the urge to bend to kiss at his mouth, to pull back and regard the way Chandler’s face looked equal parts pleased and embarrassed. 

‘You’re going soft,’ he murmured against Chandler’s mouth, a smile playing at the edge of his lips. 

Chandler didn’t say anything, eyes flickering between Kent’s, and he pressed close for another quick kiss.

(A yes, then.) 

As tempted as he was just to give up there and then, flop back down on top of Chandler and just stay there until he was contractually obliged to be somewhere else, Kent pulled away from Chandler with a gentle pat to the side of his neck and made for the kitchen. He wasn’t really that hungry but he’d have to eat something before he ended up standing over the toaster at midnight, woken again by a rumbling stomach. All his routines were off—the bloody summer sun always did that, he’d find out it was ten o’clock when he’d thought the it had only just gone dark only to remember that yes, it _had_ only just gone dark. He walked through onto the tiled floor and preemptively flicked on the light; there was still some pink in the sky, if he squinted, but they might as well start relying on artificial light. Chandler already was, sat with the end table light over his shoulder illuminating the pages in his hands. Just imagining him trying to stretch to turn it on without disturbing him from sleep was enough to make Kent smile at his own reflection in the window. (It must have required some contortion.)

Then, with a shot of something uncomfortable, Kent remembered what Mark had said. The invitation. He glanced back towards the sitting room, the familiar set of shoulders, the shadow of a profile he could recognize from touch alone. Chandler would never go for it, would he? Probably not. They weren’t exactly keeping each other secret—they couldn’t, not when they _shared a house_ —but there were some things that Kent just assumed were beyond a line. Attending a wedding as a couple was probably well past it.

He hadn’t thought about it much at first. They’d been too engrossed with the newness of it all—the novelty of being able to show how much he cared about Chandler, the thrill of being able to press his tongue to the dip in Chandler’s neck or feel the curl of his hands around his hips—to think too much further forward. In a way Kent had always assumed they’d gone as far as they would, they couldn’t go any further without doing anything that would alert the Met and that… well that wasn’t about to happen, was it? They were barely getting away with having the same address. They had Miles to thank for that—he’d been in the job long enough to know all the loopholes.

(Kent hadn’t asked.)

But, sat there at his desk in the late afternoon trying to resist foregoing reviewing the Chapman case in favour of wasting the last hour of the shift on banter, he realised. It had taken him eight months _to realise_ , but they’d never been on a date.

‘Have you eaten?’ he asked, pulling himself away from that particular train of thought. 

‘No.’ Chandler glanced back at him for a moment, the corners of his eyes wrinkled with honest amusement. ‘I didn’t have much of a chance, did I?’ 

Kent shrugged, grinning. ‘Should have just moved me, then.’

Chandler didn’t reply; Kent didn’t need him to, and he smiled at the breadboard instead. Chandler would never say—possibly didn’t even have the words—but Kent suspected he enjoyed the easy, unnecessary closeness. He hadn’t expected Chandler to be as tactile as he was, actually. There was very little in their interaction in public that would suggest the nature of their acquaintance (as Chandler had once put it, much to Kent’s amusement), but when they were on their own—well. That was different. Pleasantly different. Chandler seemed to use every excuse in the book to touch him, however briefly, and although he’d never encouraged it, he always let Kent slump against his shoulder when sleep overtook him. Once Kent had even cracked an eye and caught him smiling. 

Kent cleared his throat and peered into the fridge, trying to think of what he could do with what was in there at this time of night. Nothing came to mind immediately; Chandler would probably know. The man was a walking encyclopedia about some things—and not the things Kent had expected, if he was going to be honest. He’d expected the decent proficiency at literature questions on University Challenge; he hadn’t expected Chandler to get quite so fond of Just a Minute. He knew the little things now, too: the vague irritation at the way the bones in his neck would sometimes creak, the specific degrees of frustrated sighs that betrayed the severity of whatever situation they found themselves in. The thought brought another smile to Kent’s face—they were just a mere selection of the things he’d learnt about Chandler, since, in an odd haphazard way.  

Just as he heard Chandler sigh and get up, the sofa creaking in protest of any sort of moment, Kent decided he wasn’t going to ask—not yet. He didn’t have the energy for that conversation. He didn’t even really have the right words for the question. And, if he wanted to be entirely clear with himself, he was a little surprised he wasn’t confident in the answer. He didn’t _know_. He could guess on most things, come to an educated conclusion like he’d been taught in years of detective work, but this… with this, he didn’t know how Chandler would react. 

(Something low in his stomach suggested badly, even as Chandler walked past and laid his hand across Kent’s back, warm and comforting.) 

He didn’t need it, it wasn’t any sort of _prerequisite_ but… it would be nice.

Kent wished he would, wished he and Chandler would, but he was used to hoping. 


	2. Chapter 2

The invitation was quickly relegated to the very back of Kent’s mind with the arrival of a couple of messy (and, unfortunately very public) bodies in Whitechapel Market a few days later. They jumped into action as soon as the call came in, and luckily it hadn’t turned out to be one of their cryptic cases. Even Buchan missed his chance; they had the crucial pieces of evidence down to forensics before lunch, a good couple of hours before he surfaced with some loosely related historical deaths. Even the woman the higher-ups had seconded to them as a public relations advisor was impressed—enough, in fact, to lead her to ask Chandler if he’d fancy a drink sometime despite her initial icy attitude. (His reputation preceded him.)

It always had to happen, didn’t it? At first, in those initial few months, Kent had minded. He hadn’t liked it at all—then he’d got it into his head that Chandler’s torn look didn’t have anything to do with him, just the uncomfortable situation as a whole. He was a good man, he didn’t like having to be blunt, but sometimes… sometimes he had to, with a well-placed white lie. Now Kent just watched out of the corner of his eye with the rest of the team, the lot of them trying to smother amused expressions as Chandler fumbled his way through an excuse. 

Thankfully Hannah was one of those women who couldn’t be fazed—not unlike Erica, in a way, although Kent wouldn’t want to think about leaving her in charge of anyone’s PR—and they all parted ways with a friendly handshake and a chorus of _Well done, you lot_ and _Good work, lads_. She had given Kent a bit of a beady look as she’d walked out, accompanied by what might have been a small knowing smile, but he’d just convinced himself he’d imagined that. It wouldn’t have been the first time he’d thought he’d seen something worth panicking about. 

‘Environmental Health’ll be on our backs tomorrow,’ Mansell muttered to Kent as they straightened the desks.

(They all did it, now. Kent suspected that the others only chipped in for the sake of the off chance that they’d be able to catch him and Chandler off-guard after hours; they hadn’t managed that quite yet.) 

Miles made a gruff sound from somewhere behind both their shoulders. ‘Forget them. The Commander won’t be pleased with the fact we’ve just had to shut down a public market for the week. Lots of claims there for disrupted business. Plenty to complain about.’

‘You heard what Hannah said—that’s not our problem anymore.’

Even as he said it, Kent wasn’t sure. He knew what Miles was getting at; there had been a few terse phone conversations that put them all on edge. The council hadn’t been pleased. Bloody bureaucracy. There was always someone grasping for straws, looking for someone to blame. The most obvious answer would be Tetlock, since he was the one who throttled the victims and left them draped over food stalls, but he’d rushed into the path of an oncoming car and that was that. The team who had supposed to be responsible for bringing him in was the next best thing, wasn’t it? 

‘Yes, well.’ Miles flicked through a haphazard pile of files on the edge of Riley’s desk. ‘I’d be careful answering your phone for a while. All our names have been plastered over this since day one.’

Kent made a small assenting sound in his throat as he sorted the wrinkled papers on his desk, separated the rubbish from the worse-for-wear paperwork. He’d seen the blocked numbers come up on Chandler’s phone; all reporters who hadn’t taken a polite decline to comment as an answer. Chandler never picked those up, just switched his mobile to vibrate and let it ring out, but Kent couldn’t miss the look on his face. It spoke volumes about past experience, and Kent couldn’t help but remember the first time he’d noticed Chandler’s stunned face looking back at him from newspaper ink on the Tube. It had sent something hot and painful through him even then.

‘Reckon he’s alright?’ Mansell asked, nodding towards Chandler’s office.

Miles didn’t even look. ‘Nope. Kent?’

‘You’re back on form quick,’ Kent replied, nudging the wire bin back beneath his desk.

‘Wouldn’t have lasted this long into my old age if I wasn’t.’ 

Mansell chuckled at them both as Kent put down the file in his hands and turned to walk towards where Chandler was pacing from one end of his desk to another. He looked up when Kent’s footsteps got close enough, paused his own steps as Kent came to a stop and leant against the doorframe. There was something odd about his face, something vaguely apologetic, but even that scarpered when he (presumably) caught sight of Mansell and Miles smothering amused expressions behind Kent’s back. 

Chandler looked between them and Kent, searching for answers. ‘Yes?’

‘Come on. Pub.’ Kent paused, then glanced over his shoulder despite the DI’s confused glance. ‘Skip’s paying.’ 

Kent relished the well-deserved sense of satisfaction he got from both Chandler’s half-smiling nod and the low exclamation of ‘ _Bugger_ ,’ that came from Miles’ direction.

(Mansell’s laughed ‘You cocked that one up, skip,’ didn’t hurt either.)

*

There was a bit of juggling that needed doing in the following days, a good few hours of treading carefully, but they were back in their normal routine of paperwork and complaining before long. They had it down to a fine art. Perhaps they could get an award for that, if nothing else.

It was one of those rare days when Chandler had left the station on time. Of course, he wouldn’t think of it like that—he’d sent the rest of them home early, after all. It wouldn’t be right if he left before they did; Miles and Riley would probably try and carry him into hospital and get him checked out if that ever happened. Kent wouldn’t even stop them. He’d probably hold the doors open, in fact.

As it turned out, he didn’t have to. Chandler was perfectly capable of putting the key in the lock himself, and the following creak of the door and shift of floorboards was the same as it always was. Kent smiled at the screen of his laptop as the rattle of metal against ceramic sounded through the small house, alongside the slight shuffle of a coat removed. It wasn’t even particularly cold but Chandler still kept it with him, just in case; Kent had once thought that he’d got one coat, like the rest of them, only to find once they’d ended up sharing a wardrobe that Chandler had several versions of similar coats depending on the climate. Even in that moment Kent had flushed with the realisation that he only oscillated between wearing a coat and not—he only had the one that would reach Chandler’s standards for work, after all, and it was thick wool and certainly not suited to summer days at crime scenes—until he’d found a similar self-conscious smile on Chandler’s face. It was too easy to forget they all had their own idiosyncrasies and worried about them accordingly.

Chandler appeared from behind the corner, glancing around the room until he found what he was looking for.

‘There you are,’ he said, drawing the entirety of Kent’s attention to him. 

Kent smiled brightly, then flicked his gaze back to his laptop as one of the programs he had open made an impatient noise. ‘Did you get everything you wanted done?’

There was a pause, then: ‘Enough.’

Kent didn’t look up again. He didn’t have to, he could picture Chandler’s face just fine without the reminder. His mouth twitched into a resigned half-smile instead, directed only at the screen in front of him as Chandler’s footfalls took his body towards the kitchen. There was no need to make a fuss of it, as much as the lilt in Chandler’s voice gave Kent reason to pause and wonder if there was anything that might have set him off, might have worried him. But there wasn’t, and sometimes that was the only explanation, and Kent couldn’t do anything about it in that particular moment. (Maybe later.)

A thought occurred to him, and Kent leant back on the legs of his chair. ‘I left your post on the side.’

Chandler hummed and waved the pile of letters in his hand in front of the clear doorway; Kent watched until the DI’s face appeared, smile creasing his eyes at the edges in a warm expression that hadn’t surfaced at the station. It rarely did—not honestly, anyway. Half the time Kent didn’t even know what would prompt it (like then, for instance), but he wasn’t about to turn it down. So instead he held it, caught Chandler’s eyes with his own, resisted the impulse to imply exactly what it was that stirred in his chest at the momentary glint of canine. He just tightened his grip on the edge of the table at that ever so slightly, a minute change that only a policeman might see.

(Good thing they were detectives, then.)

But the longer they looked at one another, the realisation dawned. Chandler’s look turned disparaging, albeit fondly—that had been another of his crusades, getting his officers to stop only keeping two legs of their chairs on the ground. A surprisingly difficult habit to break, actually, through the only person to have taken a tumble was Ed and that was only magnified by the fact he took a pile of files with him. The rest of them had the manoeuvre down pat, even if they didn’t do it as much anymore. Kent just grinned at Chandler from across the room; his expression faltered, softened, and a small smile appeared.

Kent looked away when his smile threatened to break into a grin; that was beyond his control, and he didn’t really know what to do with it. Instead he stared at the browser he’d left open, wondering what he’d been doing before Chandler had distracted him. (That happened a lot.) Or, at least, he did until there was a familiar ping and Mark’s name popped up on one of the tabs. His stomach dropped and he didn’t waste any time closing that particular window; it was still too late, though, he’d get another message on his phone soon enough. Mark would _know_.

‘Uh, Em?’

Kent was glad for the distraction, especially as his suspicions had just been confirmed as another message popped up on his phone. He covered the screen with the end of a newspaper; he’d deal with that later. Tomorrow, if he could push it. Possibly even the day after.

‘Yes?' 

Chandler leant back just far enough to catch his eye. ‘The fridge is empty.’

‘There’s milk,’ Kent said, frowning, as he got up with his mug of cold tea in hand. ‘If there isn’t then what the hell did I just put in my drink?’ 

‘I know you can survive on tea,’ Chandler replied as Kent approached with a lopsided smile, gesturing with a hand towards the still-open fridge, ‘but I’m not sure I can.’ 

‘Honestly.’ Kent came to a stop closer than strictly necessary and laid his mouth against Chandler’s cheek in a brief kiss. ‘I’ve seen you work forty-eight hour shifts on nothing more than two boxes of sushi.’ 

Chandler huffed but leant closer anyway. ‘I wouldn’t recommend it.’ 

‘There’s cheese in there,’ Kent said, keeping one hand on Chandler’s side as he ducked to get a better look, ‘and the bread’s not gone odd yet. You’re capable of cheese on toast, aren’t you?’

Chandler fixed him with an overdone exasperated look. ‘Do I have to be?’

Kent grinned, and pressed another kiss to Chandler’s jaw. ‘I’ll go.’

Chandler turned to watch Kent rinse out his mug, though his hand didn’t forget to nudge the fridge door closed. ‘What?’

‘To the shops.’

‘You don’t have to—’ 

‘You just got in.’

‘You’ve settled.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Kent said, doing his best to emulate the tone of voice Miles used when he wanted Chandler to shut up. They’d had this variety of argument before and it always seemed to work; it did this time, too, as Chandler’s mouth snapped shut. Kent smirked at him and left his cup on the draining board. ‘Go on, sit down, have your tea. I’ve had mine.’

It was still a distinctly odd feeling when Chandler did something Kent said. It churned with something much warmer, much more akin to overwhelming affection as Chandler shifted close to kiss him as he passed, only a brief press of lips but even that left Kent smiling as he grabbed at his phone, his keys, his wallet. There was a Tesco Metro on Bethnal Green Road, it’d do for the night even if Kent knew Chandler favoured Waitrose. 

‘Anything in particular?’ Kent called back, a light jacket in hand. It was sunny enough, but you never really knew, did you?

There was a sound that might have suggested an intake of breath from where Chandler had settled at the kitchen table, but it was quickly interrupted by his phone. Kent frowned, twisting the collar of his jacket between his fingers—that was the ringtone they both used exclusively for calls from the station. Not Miles or any of the others, just the station itself. The mainframe. Presumably the Higher-Ups, if he dared to let his thoughts get that far. Kent’s breaths caught in his throat as he positioned himself where he could see; even so, he forced himself to push an arm through a sleeve and keep on going. Keep calm and carry on, and all that.

( _God,_ how he hated seeing that phrase.)

‘DI Chandler.’

Chandler answered how he always did, without enough syllables to betray any sort of suspicion or fear, but when he looked up and met Kent’s eye he switched the setting to speakerphone.

The fuzziness of the line crackled to life, badly amplified by the inadequate speakers. ‘It’s Mansell, boss.’ 

Kent groaned from where he’d stood shrugging on his coat, successfully masking the rush of relief, and marched over to the kitchen doorway. ‘What is it this time?’

‘What a warm welcome.’ The DC fell back on sarcasm; he always did when he fancied winding them up. 

(In fact, Kent wouldn’t have been surprised if calling them from the station’s number was just part of one big _wind up.)_

‘Mansell,’ Chandler said, the words coming out as more of an impatient sigh than anything else. ‘What’s this about?’

There was just a long enough pause for Kent to get suspicious and for Chandler to run a hand across his forehead. And really, Kent reckoned he should have known it was coming. They were speaking to _Mansell_ , after all, and to him there was only one thing he could have interrupted that would annoy both of them at the same time.

'Are you and him having sex?' 

Chandler spluttered, all sternness dissipating from his face. 'Not… not at this exact moment.'

Even Kent’s face cracked into a grin at that feeble attempt at deflective humour. If that was even what it was; he wouldn’t have been surprised if Chandler had just panicked and said the first thing that had come to mind, regardless of how casually offhand it might have seemed. Chandler frowned at the phone as Mansell was killing himself laughing on the other end, and Kent pushed his shoulder away from the doorframe to walk towards where he sat in the pool of late afternoon sun.

‘What gave you that idea?’ Chandler snapped back into the terseness of the office, bracing one elbow against the table.

‘If I’m honest, sir,’ Mansell continued, voice betraying the fact he was smothering laughter. ‘Riley and I were putting our heads together an’ we couldn’t think of a better reason why our workaholic boss would send us home before end of shift.’ 

Chandler looked between Kent and the phone, mildly panicked and possibly thinking about mentioning something about insubordination or the consequences of contumacy, but something in Kent’s amused grin caught his attention. If he was being honest then he’d admit that something in Chandler’s inarticulate shock had caught in the back of Kent’s head, unconsciously prompted him to lick his lips and plan further action, but he didn’t have to be honest. They were at home, after all. Certain guidelines no longer applied.

The DI eyed him with a mixture of trepidation and displaced interest. 'Kent—'

Kent didn’t give him a chance to finish; he interrupted whatever thought Chandler had been trying to articular with a firm kiss, one hand curling its way around the back of Chandler’s neck. For a split second Chandler froze, stunned, but (and almost surprisingly) he relaxed into Kent’s touch, let him nip and press make a bit of a spectacle of it—because who was there to see? No one. Just Mansell on the end of a phone line, him and the mind he lost in the gutter a decade and a half ago. They might as well give him something tenuous to work with. Even Kent couldn’t tell which one of them provided that slight moan as Chandler opened his mouth, let Kent in. Either way it reminded them who they were, what they were doing, who was on the other end of the phone, and despite the hand Chandler had laid on Kent’s side they pulled apart only half reluctantly.

Kent pressed close for one last moment, speaking in a faux-hush against Chandler’s cheek. 'That'll shut him up.'

Another bout of laughter emerged from the phone in Chandler’s hand; Kent was surprised he’d been able to keep ahold of it. 

Mansell had a dirty chuckle that wasn’t helped by circumstance. 'Not a chance.' 

‘If this is one of you lot’s games,’ Kent said towards the phone, still resting his palm on the back of Chandler’s neck just because he could, ‘then give yourself ten points.’

Chandler looked intensely embarrassed, a little mollified, very much disorientated—as if he couldn't quite place what just happened. 

‘Can I go to the shops now, Mansell?’ Kent continued, daring to stroke his thumb against Chandler’s jaw. ‘I, for one, would like to eat this evening.’

Something dropped out of the other constable’s voice. ‘You won’t after you’ve heard this.’

‘Shit.’

‘An understatement.’

‘ _Shit_.’ 

Chandler cleared his throat, one hand rubbing at where Kent had just let his touch slip away. ‘If you could both get to the point, please?’

‘Either we’ve got two eerily similar suicides in a space of six weeks, or that suicide last month wasn’t a suicide.’ 

They just looked at one another through the ensuing silence; neither had answers, nor questions. They’d find them soon enough. Eventually, after what felt like minutes but was probably only a handful of seconds, Kent brushed his fingers against Chandler’s arm and mouthed ‘I’ll get your coat,’ after which the DI nodded and turned back to the phone.

(He’d always done that, almost spoken to the device as if it was a person, affording it his full attention. Kent thought it was charming.)

Chandler’s coat was heavy and comforting against his arm, almost like the man himself. For a moment Kent wondered if it was the same for him, if it was some sort of protection against the world even when the sun warmed his back and there wasn’t a modicum of fog in sight, but then he noticed that everything about him had slipped back into place—the crispness of his buttoned collar and the line of the Windsor knot, the line of his sleeves and the watch on his wrist—and he couldn’t remember if that inspired confidence or concern or both. 

‘Miles—’

Mansell interrupted with what sounded like papers held between his teeth. ‘Already on his way in, boss. So is Riley.’

‘And you are?’ Chandler asked, voice tighter. 

‘Still in the station.’

So that was why it was Mansell phoning himself. Kent shook his head for a moment as he replaced his khaki jacket with the corresponding part of his suit; probably that girl down in filing. The redhead—Katie, he thought her name was. Mansell had taken a liking to her the moment she’d introduced herself, and if Kent had any observational skill at all he’d have said it went both ways. The last dealings he’d had with her suggested that he might just meet his match—not maritally, certainly not. In character, rather. He’d be kept on his toes. Might take him down a peg or two. He’d buy her a bottle of wine if that ever came to pass.

Chandler took his coat from Kent’s outstretched hand as he got to his feet. ‘We’ll go straight to the scene.’

‘Headlam Street, sir,’ Mansell replied. There was a sound like he was grabbing his own jacket and keys. ‘You won’t miss it.’

Kent handed Chandler his keys just as he said ‘Right,’ but Mansell had already hung up. The DI pulled a face at his phone, drew it away from his ear then back again before shaking his head and giving up.

‘Well,’ he said, reaching for the front door as they approached, ‘at least one of us had a sit down.’

Kent smiled at him. He didn’t need to do much else. ‘One car or two?’

‘One.’ Chandler huffed a final lurch of laughter as they stepped out into the sunlight. ‘It can’t hurt now.’ 

*

As it turned it, one had been a suicide and one hadn’t.

It was odd, really, having a case where the prime suspect was one of the victims. The chief superintendent hadn’t been at all happy with it, he thought they’d all just been barking up the wrong tree but no, there it was. They’d all had to play psychoanalyst and none of them had liked it. Chandler had mumbled something about not even having a chance with this one, everyone was dead before they started, but Miles had said something acerbic that Kent had missed and even Chandler had smiled.

At least they had an answer, and no matter how much Chandler tried to twist it he couldn’t blame himself for this one. It had gone wrong long before they got involved.

None of them had felt like a trip down the pub—a rarity, really. Kent had just planned to go home and prop himself up in front of his laptop; emails didn’t answer themselves, after all. Chandler had stayed behind at the station, citing the complexity of the report and the relative annoyance of their chief super. Kent hadn’t blamed him—he’d have wanted the thing off his hands, too, at this rate—and dared to press a quiet kiss to Chandler’s cheekbone before leaving. It didn’t matter, they didn’t normally do it but it was only Riley left in the incident room (and she was rather preoccupied with swearing at her bag while she tried to disentangle her scarf from the zip). Chandler’s hand had done some atrophied twitch towards Kent’s own in the moment afterwards, but he reined himself in; Kent had grinned and turned on his heel, expression just knowing enough for Riley to give his shoulder a chummy push on her way out. 

‘Sod off,’ was all he’d said when she rounded on him near his bike, all wide grin and waggling eyebrows.

‘Sod off yourself.’

‘That’s an inventive comeback.’

‘Shut it.’ She sounded like a cat who’d got the cream. ‘You’re _sweet_.’ 

Kent didn’t know whether to believe her. Sometimes he didn’t feel it at all. In the end he muttered something vaguely acquiescent and pulled on his helmet, but neither the rumble of the engine or the madness of London traffic really got his mind off what Riley had said. He was smothering a smile by the time he pushed the front door open, key still in the lock, but he froze when his toe clipped the pile of post that had gathered just inside the doorstep. 

That definitely wasn’t another electricity bill—although Kent was pretty sure there should be one hiding in there somewhere.

Keeping his helmet tucked against his side, he bent to grab at the papers, the plasticky envelopes and the thin newspaper stock. He let his thumb run across the raised addresses of the heaviest two, the letters that spelled out his and Chandler’s names.

He recognised the envelopes—well, perhaps not recognized exactly but anything with that sort of paper weight and heft wasn’t going to just be another letter from the council. The things were embossed, for God’s sake, Kent hadn’t realised they’d decided to go that far. He certainly hadn’t expected to get two invitations, one addressed to him and the other to Chandler. He bit at his lip as he flipped the envelope over, stared at the blank back; it was out of his hands now, wasn’t it? He’d left it a bit late. Asking Chandler to be his plus one was on his own head. Delivering a personally addressed letter from someone Chandler had never met was a little different. 

In any case, he couldn’t do anything about it stood in the hall still in his coat. For a brief moment Kent wondered if it was too early to justify having a beer before he tried to deal with this latest development, but he decided it probably was and made to fill the kettle instead. He left the post in a neat pile on the edge of the end table, the corners aligned with the wood. (As if that would soften the blow.) Even as he did it he was restless, unsure exactly what he wanted to do with himself.

In the end he’d just left the kettle to its own devices and gone to change. The collar on his shirt had suddenly felt stifling, the waistcoat restrictive. He pulled on one of Chandler’s jumpers instead, its cashmere contradictory to the tears in his jeans, the dark hunter green one that Kent had accidentally commandeered one morning. The postman had come early one morning (or had they been late? It didn’t matter anymore, not that Kent could tell why) and Kent had rolled out of bed with a muttered curse, grabbed the closest thing that looked vaguely like a top, and made his way downstairs to sign for whatever parcel had arrived that time. He didn’t even bother checking what it was once he’d shut the door, just left it on the side table and went straight back to bed. Chandler had turned and thrown an arm over him as he returned and resettled beside him, warm and solid, but cracked an eye a moment later and asked _‘is that my jumper_?’ It had been, and Kent said as much. Chandler had just chuckled, still sleep-sodden, and pulled him to his chest.

Kent smiled at the memory and refreshed the page on his laptop before him for the third time, stood at the corner of the counter and still vaguely embarrassed that he’d only just realised the kettle wasn’t switched on at the wall. He really did hate the Met’s external access systems. His phone vibrated in his back pocket; he tensed and fished it out with a growing sense of trepidation that fell away once he realised it was just another promotional email. Kent scowled at it and peered at the fine print, trying to find the link that would unsubscribe him; even as he swore under his breath when the touchscreen jumped he knew he couldn’t keep on like this for much longer. Jumping every time the phone went. It wasn’t healthy. It wasn’t even for a good reason. He should be able to talk about this. They should be able to.

(Could they? They haven’t even tried yet.) 

He was rooted to the spot with that thought; so much so that when both the front door opened and the kettle boiled simultaneously he didn’t really know where to look. Or what to do, really, so maybe it was that that made him turn on his socked heel and pad back through the sitting room looking for something to occupy his hands. He didn’t trust himself with boiling water. He’d accidentally done enough to himself with that in the past to make him wary. A small voice in the back of his head murmured that it hadn’t all been bad, had it now, but he silenced it with a secreted smile and waited for the moment.

The one he knew was coming.

‘That’s odd.’ 

(Oh, _God_. It was too late now, wasn’t it?)

(Kent should have known it was the sort of thing that requires some preparation.) 

( _Shit_.)

‘Emerson?’ Chandler’s voice was level, though questioning. ‘Em?’

Kent cleared his throat and rubbed at his arm. ‘Round here.’

He didn’t really know what he expected. The world to implode, maybe? But it didn’t, the only thing that happened was that Kent tightened his own grip around his wrist and Chandler appeared, and it wasn’t at all what he’d thought—though whether it was better or worse he couldn’t tell. Kent didn’t even know what he hoped for, either, just knew that Chandler had unfastened the top button of his collar and loosened his tie but his face wasn’t the same as it usually was. It wasn’t wrong, it wasn’t the opposite, it just… wasn’t. Wary wasn’t the word. Kent couldn’t tell what was. 

‘I don’t think we’ve had anything here addressed to me before, have we?’

Chandler looked to him, gesturing with the letters Kent had tried so hard to temporarily discard. His mind wasn’t quite keeping up; usually he’d have been thrilled with pronoun, the inclusion, but instead all he could notice were the signs, the muffled strain in Chandler’s voice.

He still had his coat on.

Kent had a creeping suspicion he placed more significance on that than strictly necessary. 

‘You don’t think…’

Chandler trailed off; exactly what he was frightened of was clear. The problem was that Kent was approaching it from clear the opposite direction, with an entirely different backstory, and it took him a minute. When it did slot into place, when it clicked, Kent’s mouth morphed into a soft ‘ _oh_ ’ and he felt the anxiety drain from his bones, the infernal fight or flight fizzle out to a vague desire to press his palms to the breadth of Chandler’s collarbone, curl his fingers around his shoulders. Pull him close.

But, instead, he shrugged. ‘It’s only from Mark and Jess.’ 

That revelation didn’t seem to soothe Chandler. 

Kent pressed on, half-frowning. ‘My old flatmates.’ 

‘Yes, I know.’

‘They’re getting married, remember?’

Chandler hummed, nodded, and kept his gaze on the letter in his hand. There wasn’t anything particularly tense about him anymore, not as far as Kent could see, and it took him a moment to realise that he might be looking at confusion. As if it wasn’t the fact that he was standing there with an invitation sent to this address in his hand that bothered him, but that he didn’t know why that had come to pass in the first place. 

It was incredibly endearing. It lessened the tension in Kent’s chest for a split second, and although it prompted the familiar urge to pull Chandler to his chest and nestle his profile into the line of his neck he only managed to get as far as laying hand on Chandler’s arm and flexing his fingers against his expensive suit jacket. (Even that was familiar, now. Of all things.) Chandler might have shifted closer to him, but they were both so well-versed in the necessary subtlety that it could very well have been a figment of Kent’s imagination.

Chandler swallowed, then looked away from the paper in favour of meeting Kent’s gaze. ‘How’d you know it was them?’

‘Oh,’ Kent said, caught a little off guard by the question. He let his fingers slip away from the crook of Chandler’s elbow. ‘Mark rang me.’

‘When…?’

‘I meant to mention it.’ Kent didn’t want to say _ages ago_ , although it was true. ‘Sorry. We, uh—we got a bit busy.’

Chandler hummed in agreement, flipping the filigreed card to read the other side.

‘Are you going to go?’

‘I was planning to, yeah,’ Kent said, shoving his hands in his front pockets. He knew it was a telling sign, a sort of nervous gesture, but it didn’t stop him from doing it with a gentle shrug and a huffed laugh. ‘I suppose I’d best get round to putting in a request for a couple of days off.’ 

Chandler gave him a half-hearted smile. ‘There’s time.’

Like with many things Chandler said, Kent didn’t quite know what he meant. There was something knowing about his words, something suggestive, hidden; a degree of easy consciousness that might imply agreement. Kent couldn’t be sure. He might just have been reading into it. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d done that. He hadn’t been wrong the first time, though, so perhaps… Kent didn’t quite dare to hope.

Just as Kent was gathering the courage to spit out some sort of variation of _What do you think, then? You coming?_ , Chandler’s mouth tightened and he turned away from him, angling his trajectory towards the kitchen. Kent watched him go, fingers fidgeting; when he came to a halt and began separating the rest of the post stood in the patch of sun that fell on the table, he looked towards his desk instead, the controlled mess.

It didn’t give him any answers. It didn’t even enlighten him to what the questions were. 

There was nothing to do except move along, but Chandler had clearly prioritized thinking over speaking.

Kent had an urge to press a kiss to the back of Chandler’s neck, to wrap his arms around his middle from behind and press his face to Chandler’s shoulder blade, say _Forget it_ or _I told them you wouldn’t go for it, don’t worry_. But doing all that would be covering a trail with bare-faced lies and they knew how to pick those apart in their sleep. Chandler would recognize the tremor in his voice, any slight hesitation; Kent couldn’t look for comfort in him and give it, too. They were both a bit too unstable for that.

He followed him into the kitchen anyway. The house was too small for them both to avoid each other, and Kent didn’t really want to start doing that anytime soon. Plus, he’d filled the kettle and not done anything about it; it was something to do now, he supposed, and wasn’t a cup of tea supposed to fix everything?

(He’d had a decent run of experience that would corroborate that suggestion, too.)

Kent opened a cupboard to choose a mug just as Chandler chose to come to a momentary stop. ‘Tea?’

He looked up, half-distracted, but shook his head and said, ‘No, it’s fine.’ 

‘Right.’

Kent went through the motions, trying to think more about them than the way Chandler moved through the room behind him. It didn’t help that the sounds he made, his gentle noises that just came from coexistence, were almost as familiar as making tea, the ritual his aunt had instilled in him the moment he could be trusted with boiling water. Kent might have suspected that bringing Chandler into his life would be that easy (he’d always been an accommodating sort of man, and even he’d admit he’d been devoted to Chandler the minute he’d laid eyes on him, in various incarnations), but he wouldn’t have thought it could be that… total. All-encompassing. Trust him to notice only then. 

Kent watched the tea steep in silence as Chandler opened another of his letters, the tear much neater than any Kent had ever managed to do, and read it leaning against the opposite counter. The silence wasn’t especially uncomfortable but even as Kent distracted himself with the task at hand, he couldn’t help but wonder. They hadn’t got an answer, had they? Jess wouldn’t be pleased. She’d been even worse than Mark, even going as far as threatening to come down to London herself to see what on earth was going on. She wouldn’t, of course, it was all hot air but it gave Kent reason to pause. 

It had been easy for them, he supposed. There was more to think about with him and Chandler, both with their own personal neuroses and what it would mean for them professionally. What _they_ would mean for _them_ professionally. They might have been doing a pretty good job at keeping it discreet but every now and then the thought entered Kent’s head that if it came down to it, would either of them choose the job over what they had now?

It was one of those questions he couldn’t answer so he tried not to think about. The burn of hot liquid against his tongue snapped him away from it that time, made his mind conjure up a creative combination of curses instead of the plethora of scenarios he dreaded. The smarting would stay with him, too, keep a tenderness inside his mouth that a quick jab with a tooth would reawaken. He was all set, then, with his particular questionable method of distraction. A quick glance over his shoulder told him Chandler had another letter in his hands, one page folded back as he read the second. Kent decided to make himself scarce and made as if to walk off somewhere else; he was close enough if he was needed, no matter where he decided to end up.

‘Em.’

Kent slowed to a stop before he really thought about what he was doing. Something in Chandler’s voice called him back, and it wasn’t the same thing that kept them all in the office after hours, kept them working when they really should be taking breaks. It was something softer than that. Something more akin to a question without being one, and even at a moment like this Kent wouldn’t leave him without some sort of an answer. So he turned back, took a step towards Chandler, and when his expression beckoned him closer he didn’t resist. 

Chandler curled an arm around his waist, drawing him to his side. Kent went where he was guided, he’d missed the warmth of Chandler’s skin all day, keeping one eye on the mug in his hand as they bumped shoulders. The last thing he wanted was scalding tea on both their suits, but Chandler didn’t seem to mind the fact he was holding it as he tightened his grip and pressed a kiss to the side of his head. He rested his mouth again Kent’s temple as he sighed out through his nose, almost contented.

Kent pressed his nose into Chandler’s shoulder. He didn’t know what it all meant.

(Had he ever?)

* 

Kent glanced up and down the street before stepping into the road, jogging the last couple of feet as a taxi rounded the corner. He scowled after the back window as it sped off, swerving around the other corner a bit too wide to be safe, but kept on walking nonetheless. The lingering annoyance was just another remnant of his years as a cyclist; he’d had more than a few handfuls of close scrapes with black cabs.

Even summer afternoon sun couldn’t burn the smell of cigarettes out of the air. Kent sniffed and curled his lip; he didn’t mind the smell of smoke most of the time, but as far as he could tell there were certain ones that were sub-par and that stale scent hung the doorway to the block of flats. It was strongest under the no smoking sign, ironically, and someone was having a shouting match that drifted down to the street from one of the open windows. Kent turned up the volume on his earphones by a couple of notches and watched his shadow stretch across those of the leaves as he rounded the next corner.

They were in August now; he’d even had a couple of _Any news?_ texts from both Mark and Jess, fishing for more information. Not that he had any to give them. At first he had just felt the familiar gentle amusement that came from their references to Chandler—Jess was particularly keen to meet him, if only to administer some sort of warning speech that Kent felt was plainly unnecessary—then there came the wave of dread that he had to push aside in order to get on with things. It wasn’t even necessarily only because Chandler could refuse, tell Kent that it would be better if he went on his own; it was because an answer would change things, wouldn’t it? Any answer. And he’d been so _happy_. 

He wanted it—well, he did and he didn’t. The last thing he’d felt like that about had been his move to CID. All in all, that had been a good decision, but at the time there was a part of him who had mourned for what he’d left behind in uniform. It had been an… uncomfortable time. It had passed, obviously, he couldn’t think of going back to uniform now but he wasn’t sure whether or not it would be the same when it came to his relationship. He couldn’t leave that behind after the shift and refuel, and Chandler was too well-tuned to his moods now to not notice if he was off.

Kent came from a family of easy affection, of open gesture and off the cuff acknowledgement. His friends had all been the same, falling into the right thing at the right time and never denying it, tempering it. He’d never thought, never _presumed_ that he’d have that with Chandler. He was over the moon with everything they already had, from the gentle familiarity to the hard, grasping kisses, but it was difficult to dissociate from the question when it was in front of him.

But, in the end, Kent just scolded himself and reminded his treacherous mind that it was only early days, that he was a patient sort of man and eight or nine months was nothing. People didn’t fall into these things fully formed, not even them, no matter how much that might seem like the case. They’ve worked enough cases with surface-level perfection for him to know that much. It wasn’t that he wasn’t confident in them. He just didn’t have much faith in the rest of the variables. 

A silver car passed him as Kent was making sure the road was clear at the last intersection. He’d only vaguely registered it as familiar when he realised he recognized the registration as Chandler’s. When precisely he’d come to store that sort of information in the back alleys of his brain was a question for an entirely different day—probably the same one where he’d wonder how on earth Chandler had managed to amass a passable knowledge of Kent’s particular taste in music—but he knew it. Somehow.

He recognised Chandler from silhouette alone now, too, from the cut of his coat and the way his hair tipped out of place as he climbed out of the car. He was lucky that afternoon. Either they were earlier or someone else was late; it was unusual for him to park so close to the front door. Typical London parking, but at least it wasn’t two pound an hour.

Kent approached with a nose full of smog and a mouth full of summer air; he wanted neither. What he wanted was for Chandler to look at him, to catch his eye, to seek him out in the surroundings as if it was the most natural thing in the world. As far as Kent was concerned, the opposite had been true for years, but every time he saw it mirrored in Chandler’s face was one for the books.

When Chandler did turn, Kent had approached closer than he thought he could have. Chandler was usually quick with footsteps, inquisitive with his gaze. This time he paused, as if it was surprising that they should find themselves on the same road, but the following smile suggested it was a happy coincidence. Kent knew he was pleased with this version of events; he hadn’t seen that smile for a few days. He doubted Chandler even knew he’d done it, bewitched him with a flash of tooth and a handsome glance through the London sun. It made him brilliant.

Or, at least, Kent thought so.

He definitely didn’t say it. Instead, he went for a grin and, ‘You only just beat me this time.’

‘I didn’t realise we were racing.’ That lopsided smile appeared again. 

‘We could be.’

Chandler shrugged and locked the car with a flick of his wrist. ‘We know better.’

Kent could feel the flush rise on the back of his neck, the prickle along his shoulders. Chandler didn’t even link the implication. Maybe he had a one track mind, he didn’t know, but Chandler valued the slow, the careful. The intent and the execution. In _everything_. Kent swallowed, remembered, tried not to. It was difficult enough at work.

(It wasn’t much easier anywhere else, given the right glance or graze of fingers or tone of voice. Kent didn’t know what had done it this time, only that it had, and he couldn’t quite wrap his head around it yet.)

‘Inside?’ Chandler asked with a glancing touch to Kent’s arm, a site of ignition.

Kent nodded, wrapping the wire of his earphones around his fingers, and followed Chandler’s lead into the house.

Chandler had only just got his jacket off when Kent made the decision; it had been welling in the back of his throat ever since he’d caught sight of the man climbing out of his car, the way his face lit up that little bit when he spotted him come around the corner. He didn’t want to lose that, desperately wanted to keep it, to commit it to some sort of memory that wouldn’t fail him. He wanted to feel it, as much as he knew he couldn’t touch an abstraction. 

He tried anyway, reaching out with a tentative nudge to the back of Chandler’s waistcoat. ‘Joe.’

(The wistfulness in his voice was a bit telling, but he couldn’t do anything about that.)

Chandler turned with a soft expression, a slight frown that had nothing to do with work. That one was Kent’s, one Chandler kept exclusively for them.

‘Em?’

Kent held out a hand, not really sure what he was doing with it. Chandler seemed to understand what he meant, though, as he slipped his fingers into the spaces between Kent’s. No questions asked, although they must have been there.

He tugged Chandler to him by his shirt with his other hand and pulled their mouths together with a sigh. He’d wanted to do that all day, the urge flaring up now and again when he caught sight of Chandler out of the corner of his eye, but it was so far out of the question that he’d got used to pushing it aside by now. Chandler didn’t resist, just molded his mouth against his; it was a relief that they didn’t have to speak.

Kent knew Chandler could tell there was something off about him; the awareness came through every careful push, each flick of his tongue a question. But his hands were warm and sure and that’s all Kent wanted in that moment, a bit of confidence between them both.

‘I need you,’ he said to the skin at the edge of Chandler’s collar, lips against his pulse point, cradling the back of his neck and lightly stroking his fingers along his jaw.

Chandler swallowed, wet his lips—Kent could feel each movement against the side of his skull—and for a moment a shot of dread shot through Kent. But no, Chandler’s hand came up to his jaw and Kent let him tilt his chin up to kiss him again. Kent hummed into Chandler’s mouth, a low, pleased sound, and Chandler gripped at his side. It all escalated from there; tentative turning to demanding, a glancing touch turning into something much more concrete as Chandler crowded Kent against the doorframe, kisses once tender turning a little darker, a little richer.

‘What’s this about?’ Chandler asked as he pulled back for a moment, his breathing already altered.

Kent ran his thumb across Chandler’s bottom lip, toyed with the knot of Chandler’s tie. ‘Does it have to be anything?’

The answer was _You, you, just being there_ but Kent didn’t say it. Not out loud, anyway, but there must have been some part of him that did because although Kent could still feel Chandler’s bounding pulse beneath his fingers and the way his breathing went just that bit too hard he didn’t do anything for a moment. Just looked, watched, and (presumably) thought. Kent thought they’d done enough of that for a while.

He took the opportunity to walk Chandler back, push him towards the stairs, hands at his belt. Kent wouldn’t have been surprised if he looked undone already; sometimes it didn’t take much. When Chandler trembled like that it didn’t take much at all. The muscle jumped under Kent’s fingers, knuckles, and Chandler made a wanting sound in the back of his throat, taking Kent’s head between his hands and holding him in place for a barely-controlled kiss before reluctantly turning to navigate the stairs. Even though he was right there, _right there_ , with one hand trailing across his jaw and shoulder, Kent still felt alone until he could plaster himself along Chandler’s front again as they stumbled across the landing.

The bed, uncharacteristically unmade (Chandler had gone in early, and Kent had left it a bit late to bother straightening it before rushing into work) beckoned. They were both in various states of undress, rumpled and half-undone without much thought, and Kent could only just stand to wait until they’d finished the line of buttons on their shirts and kicked off shoes before he pulled Chandler atop him, pawing at the fabric on his shoulders until it went somewhere else. Kent was too enamoured with the spread of Chandler’s collarbone to care exactly where. He’d lost his shirt somewhere in the commotion—was it a commotion? It felt like one, a very lovely one, in Kent’s head—and Chandler wasted no time in running his hands across Kent’s sides, his ribs, the in-out of his lungs as they tumbled against the haphazard pillows and arranged their limbs, and tried not to lose track of each other’s mouths.

Chandler broke the kiss first but Kent didn’t allow it, chased it and captured Chandler’s mouth again with a mixture of a huff and a whimper. It worked, for a while, as they clashed noses and teeth and Chandler worked the last of the fabric from their hips.

Kent tried to pull him back down, so he could be hidden. (It was one of those days.) 

Chandler obliged and Kent curled his hands under Chandler’s arm, over his shoulder, feeling the shift of bone and muscle as Chandler tipped his head to mouth at the curve of Kent’s neck, the crook of his jaw. His heart raced and this throat tightened as he arched into Chandler’s warmth, the line of his body and his promise; a half-strangled moan escaped him as Chandler nipped at his ear, at the tendons in his neck. The tender laugh that came with them only served to make Kent grip at him harder, pressing his skin white.

‘Joe,’ he gasped as Chandler painted a bruise on the slope of his shoulder with a press of tongue. 

The response was infuriatingly, intoxicatingly lazy. ‘Yes?’

‘Don’t—’ Kent was interrupted by a kiss, teeth at his lower lip, but that didn’t stop him from sliding his grip to Chandler’s hips and biting out a half-frustrated, ‘Don’t _dawdle_ ,’ as soon as he was able. 

Chandler tried to silence him with an eloquent crook of his brow, but Kent pulled and arched his back and he was interrupted by the arriving whimpering moan that took him by surprise. Kent wrinkled his nose and grinned, letting out half a laugh as Chandler lurched forward to kiss him, pressing them both back into the nearest pillow.

He locked his arms around Chandler’s neck, pushing up into his grasp, blindly trying to align their hips. In some hazy region of his brain he knew that they could go about this better, they had enough knowledge to be precise, to be efficient, but for some reason he preferred the slips, the way they distracted themselves and lost sight of the endgame. Kent wasn’t sure what that was anymore, but when they got the angle right and Chandler rocked against him he found he thought he was halfway there. More than. He didn’t even care where he was going—if anywhere-as long as Chandler kept pressing, kept pushing, kept his hand on Kent’s hip _right there—_

He threw his head back, moaning long and low, and Chandler pressed gentle kisses to the column of his throat that contrasted sharply with the rasp of touch, the shift and roll of their hips. Each falter, when they started, each overreach. Kent hooked one leg across Chandler’s, did his best to meet each movement with an equal one of his own, until Chandler released his joint in favour of wrapping the hand around them both. Kent tightened the grip he’d got in the back of Chandler’s hair with a groan, panting (hard, _harder_ ) unless they managed to smear out another kiss, until he was spilling into his hand, his mouth pressed against Chandler’s shoulder.

Oxygen seemed in short supply as Kent tried to catch his breath, but he was too preoccupied with the feeling of the man on top of him to notice. He bit his bottom lip and glanced up at Chandler, his blown pupils and reddened mouth, and with a warm kiss stroked and pressed until Chandler gave in completely, butter-soft and moaning. 

_Yes._ That was what he wanted. 

Kent laid there gulping in air, drowsy and limp, reveling in the press of Chandler’s laboured breathing against his ribs. He didn’t really know if he was coming or going, or what day it was, or if he cared. He probably did but it felt distant. Kent carded a hand through Chandler’s hair instead, smiled at the ceiling as he felt the twitch of Chandler’s lips against his chest.

Chandler pushed himself up on an elbow and twisted away from him, wrestling with the sheets. Kent watched until he managed to get to his feet, then turned his face into the rucked pillow.

‘Come back, you were warm.’ 

Kent mumbled the words before he really knew he was speaking at all, but Chandler chuckled nonetheless. They had these moments, now and then. These careless seconds. But his head never stayed empty for long, and Kent followed Chandler’s suit sooner rather than later. If he wasn’t going to stay then he’d go and get him; they had hours, _hours_.

The bathroom was warm, the air moist; the best Kent could see of Chandler was the spread of his shoulders under the hot spray, the soft jut of his spine. The room was a mist of sandalwood and fir, a coating of scent that would have just been vaguely warm and wintery before but now just spelled out Chandler and the silk of his skin, the huff of his breath in the middle of the night. Kent daubed at himself with the corner of a wet towel, breathed in deeply, promptly chucked it in the washing basket. He always went hazy in times like this, in the bliss and the warmth, and he gripped onto the side of the cool sink basin until Chandler stepped out onto the tile.  

Beads of water transferred onto Kent’s shoulder as Chandler pressed close, nudged at the skin behind Kent’s ear. ‘Hey.’

Kent leant into him, his heat, his damp warmth; with a kiss Chandler pulled away, toweled off. Kent almost forgot it was the afternoon until Chandler pressed back against him, hot and dry, and the cool breeze from the open window suddenly felt icy.

Kent bundled them back into bed, wheezing as he let himself take an ungainly fall backwards, and gathered the light sheet around them. He kicked the duvet to the end of the bed, already comfortably warm without the layer of cotton and down, and Chandler paused to straighten it the best he could. Their awkward routine. When had he ever thought routine could be boring? The _knowing_ was half the excitement, half the adoration.

He rubbed his hand along Chandler's ribs, nuzzled his neck. There was a headache stirring somewhere behind Kent’s eyes, a shooting pain in his leg that came back periodically, but even as the sun pushed its way through his bedroom curtains he turned his face into Chandler’s neck and rested there, breathing deeply. He wasn’t going to move, not yet, not for a couple of hours if he could help it. Chandler could, if he wanted, but that didn’t seem likely either as he stroked his hand across Kent’s back, the movement across his spine in time with their breathing. 

Chandler took in a breath to speak as his hand slowed, coming to a stop splayed across Kent’s hip. ‘Em?’

Kent didn’t answer immediately, just sighed through his nose and hummed. The warmth and familiarity of Chandler’s skin commanded too much of his already limited attention.

‘Are you…’ Chandler started, obviously unsure about where he was going with the thought. ‘There isn’t anything the matter, is there?’

As much as Kent would have liked to give him an answer, there wasn’t one. Not anything straightforward, anyway, nothing he could have wrapped his head around in that moment. He just wanted to lie there, let his mind be empty for a while, focus on the way Chandler’s shoulder pressed into his collarbone, the way his skin was still mottled pink from the heat of the shower, the slight rasp of the day’s stubble against the bridge of his nose.

He sighed again, more contented than anything else, and just said, ‘Stay.’

(It was inflected as a question but he didn’t want to think about that, either. He had to believe Chandler would.)

That time Chandler didn’t answer either, just shifted onto his side and slid an arm beneath Kent’s head to wrap around his shoulders, pull him close to his chest. Kent went where he was directed, the arm he wasn’t lying on curling around Chandler’s middle as he pressed close, his head nestled into the curve of Chandler’s neck and jaw. His leg twinged again as he tried to rearrange his limbs; Kent’s sharp intake of breath and muttered curse prompted Chandler to tighten his grip. 

‘It’s all right,’ Kent said, almost mouthing the words against skin. Then he smiled, almost chuckled, and said, ‘Damn my leg.’

Chandler didn’t catch the reference; Kent didn’t expect him to. Instead he just sighed out through his nose with his mouth pressed against Kent’s forehead, and Kent listened with eyes shut as their breathing evened out.

The answer could wait. 

They had time.

*

They had a quiet few days. Chandler had suggested they all use the time to get caught up on paperwork, but they didn’t, not really. Especially not when Riley came back from the ladies’ one morning and announced there was fresh meat in the building.

Miles looked up from the file Buchan had dropped on his desk. ‘What?' 

‘Right, sorry,’ Riley said after a moment of confusion. ‘I forgot this is Whitechapel. It wouldn’t be impossible for there actually to be fresh meat in the building.’

‘Wouldn’t shock me,’ Miles grumbled, and despite his cynicism Riley chuckled as she explained. 

A DI Laurence had been sent down from Manchester and promptly managed put everyone on edge. Thankfully it was nothing to do with them—something closer to the Commander’s rank, whispers of something to do with internal investigations—but it didn’t stop him from managing to get on everyone’s nerves by lunchtime. Kent would never understand the animosity towards London coppers, they’re all just the same really whether or not they work in the capital, but clearly some people took it more seriously than he did.

Kent just didn’t like the fella because he was a prick. He breathed an odd sigh of relief when he’d popped upstairs and seen him shaking hands with one of the DCIs and making his way out the front doors. He tried to ignore the fact he’d spent too many moments irrationally concerned that the internal affair was something about _them_. It wasn’t, of course, because why on earth would Manchester be bothered, but he’d still thought it.

He could be such an idiot.

Once Laurence had gone Kent settled down at his desk, nursing a cappuccino he’d popped down the street to get when he’d tasted the dire state of the coffee in the station. The rest of them sat around discussing their rapidly approaching evenings; Kent steered well clear although he answered some of their questions with a silent, sly smile. That was all they were getting from him and they knew it. It didn’t stop him from grinning at his own papers as they shuffled out.

Miles clapped a hand to his shoulder as he passed. ‘Don’t work too hard, kid,’

‘I won’t.’

‘I know,’ Miles said as he shrugged on his coat, and even he had the audacity to wink at him on his way out.

Kent just stared at the form in front of him and shook his head. He honestly had no idea how they’d got to this point.

More pointedly, he had no idea how he’d got so comfortable with it.

*

‘Train or car?’

‘What?’

Kent looked up from where he was cross-referencing witness statements to find Chandler leant against the doorframe of his office. He hadn’t even heard him get up; either he was going deaf or he was getting far too absorbed in deciphering handwriting. Perhaps he was. Perhaps that meant something. 

They were alone in the incident room, the summer sky still illuminated despite the late hour. It felt like Miles had only just left, taking Riley and Mansell with him for an apparently long-promised drink. Kent had watched them go through the corner of his eye, vaguely suspicious of the fact he hadn’t heard a word about it, but let them think he’d just ignored them. If that what they wanted, that’s what they’d get. They usually had a reason for trying to be underhand. Kent resisted the urge to chew on the end of his pen; perhaps they knew this was coming before he did.

‘Your flatmates’ wedding,’ Chandler clarified, taking another step towards Kent’s desk. ‘Would you prefer us to go by train, or by car?’

Kent tried to cram what should have been ten minutes of reasoning into a few seconds. His immediate reaction was train, but it wasn’t that simple. Chandler would undoubtedly hate trains as he hated all public transport—and Kent couldn’t really fault him for that, some of the things were absolutely foul. He only put up with them because he had to. Plus they’d be restricted by timetables, they’d probably have to change at some point, and they’d end up waiting on a station somewhere in London in a decidedly non-work-related manner. But the drive down to Somerset was awkward, they’d have to go through Bristol unless they wanted to use the winding (and, in Kent’s opinion, infuriating) rural roads, and there was petrol to think about. And getting around once they arrived, too—it wasn’t in Chandler’s nature to go for public transport any more than for trains, as he’d already thought, but at least in London Kent knew what he was doing. They’d both be lost trying to decipher anything else.

‘So—' 

‘Wait—’ Kent interrupted, backtracking. ‘You—you want to go?’

Chandler looked a little embarrassed, as if he was hyperaware of the situation without Kent drawing more attention to it. He tried to shrug but it didn’t quite work; Kent’s mouth twitched into a momentary sympathetic smile.

In the end, Chandler settled for clearing his throat and a slightly awkward, ‘If you do.’

Kent felt like saying that of course he did, of course he wanted _them_ to go and not just for him to show up on his own to do his duty as ex-flatmate to retell every embarrassing story he could possibly remember about Mark, of course he wanted Chandler there—but that would be saying too much, wouldn’t it?

He grinned instead, putting down the pen still in his hand, and said, ‘I can’t imagine you on a train.’

Chandler smiled a little, the edges wavering. ‘I have a Network Railcard, you know.’ 

‘Fat lot of good that’ll do you trying to get down to the southwest.’

‘True.’

Kent squashed down the overwhelming happiness he felt at the prospect and tapped his pen against the pile of papers.‘I suppose it depends on when we want to go.’ 

Chandler looked at him oddly. ‘The twentieth.' 

‘Well, yes,’ Kent began, ‘but we could go the day before and spare ourselves the early morning, or the day of and spend hours traveling either way. I’d expect we’d have to stay down there that night, unless you fancy driving back overnight. Though, knowing Jess and Mark, I wouldn’t bank on being able to operate heavy machinery after any party of theirs.’

Chandler’s quiet laugh echoed through the room. Kent didn’t quite know how serious he was being. (Probably very.)

‘You don’t think…’ He began after a moment’s quiet, swiping at something invisible on his sleeve. 

Kent resisted the urge to get up and still his hand. ‘There’ll be no paper trail. I’m sure we can orchestrate that.’

‘You say that like you’ve done it before.’

Kent didn’t say anything, just shot Chandler an overdone shushing expression and listened to him chuckle. It was almost as if they weren’t discussing something that might just shift everything they’d built a little bit to the left. Or the right, Kent couldn’t tell, just that it might move.

‘I don’t mind either way, really,’ he said eventually, turning back to his papers but not really seeing them. ‘I’ll have a look at the timetable later, see what’s available.’

‘No, you don’t—’ Chandler caught himself, stumbling over his words until he fell silent and placed his hands in his pockets. ‘I’ll—we’ll drive. If you don’t mind.’

‘Yeah.’ Kent nodded, trying to train himself not to smile too widely yet. ‘Yeah, all right.’

(How could he mind? It felt as if it might be physically impossible.) 

Chandler smiled, eyes downcast, and Kent watched him oscillate between walking back into his office and further into the incident room. He knew the feeling, the leftover adrenaline. Many a time Kent had taken a chance like that and felt restless for ages afterwards. Not known what to do with himself. Kent usually found that trying to walk somewhere put paid to that, the annoyance at people meandering all over the pavement overtaking the vague, aimless elation. He glanced up for another moment and saw Chandler leafing through one of his perfectly organized drawers, the familiar glint of gold twisted between his fingers.

But, funnily enough, he didn’t look distressed. He didn’t even look relieved. He just looked… well, happy.

Something pleased tapped at the inside of Kent’s chest as he turned back to the forms.

Chandler reappeared at his shoulder a moment later, coat in hand. ‘Home?’ 

‘Yeah,’ Kent said, looking up and grinning. ‘Go on then.’

*

Kent’s stupidly low alcohol tolerance meant that it took him two tries to get his key in the lock. He didn’t know why; he’d been fine walking home from the pub. He’d even managed to avoid that odd paving stone that always got him even when he hadn’t been near the drink for days. Something in the back of his mind said he shouldn’t have agreed to a quick pint at the pub, taken a leaf out of Chandler’s book, especially when it was a Wednesday and it was Mansell who had suggested it. For a policeman, that man was never up to any good. It was just that when it was a lovely summer’s day and you worked in an office that was mostly basement, then even the prospect of a smoky beer garden started to sound appealing.

It had been, and he shouldn’t have let Miles buy him that second pint. Beginning of a slippery slope, and all that. Kent reckoned he was in the running for a headache later, probably, if he was unlucky. The fact the slamming of the door behind him didn’t hurt gave him hope, though, and he dropped his keys on the sideboard. Mark Lawson’s voice drifted through from the kitchen, discussing some new release neither he nor Chandler had the time to think about, let alone look for in Waterstones. Still, the thought made him smile as he glanced through the sitting room, the kitchen in question. Or perhaps that was the drink.

Chandler was nowhere to be found, at least not on the ground floor. Kent knew he should be home, at the very least; he’d managed to read that text before Riley had grabbed at his phone with a playful, almost-sly grin and he’d pushed it into his jacket pocket for safekeeping. Even so, it was strangely quiet. Neither of them were especially loud people, especially not Chandler, but Kent would have expected there to be a little more as far as sounds of life. Maybe he was too sensitive; he’d always hated the silent houses, the rooms you could _tell_ were empty. It was more than noise. You could feel existence.

He found Chandler upstairs; it wasn’t a large place, after all, and he wasn’t hiding. At least, Kent didn’t think so. If he was he wasn’t doing it very well, sat on their end of their bed studying the open wardrobe. His jacket was folded, draped across the duvet behind him; he hadn’t undone his tie. Kent couldn’t help but think that meant something.

‘Hello,’ he said, bracing one shoulder against the door jamb.

‘What?’ Chandler almost jumped but calmed as soon as he met Kent’s eye. ‘Oh, hello.’ His gaze slid back to somewhere indeterminate in front of him. ‘Didn’t hear you come in.’

Kent smiled despite himself. ‘What you doing, then?’

Chandler’s shoulders did something that might have betrayed a laugh, but no sound came out. ‘Trying to wrap my head around packing.’ 

‘There’s another week yet.’

‘Precisely. I might have left it a bit late.’

Kent suddenly felt a lot more clear-headed, except for the confusion. ‘You’ve lost me.’

‘You know me, Emerson.’ 

Chandler was right; he did know him. He didn’t need this spelling out for him. He didn’t particularly want to make Chandler explain unless he wanted to.

‘Do you want a hand, or…?’ Kent trailed off; this could be one of those things Chandler had to do himself.

‘I, um,’ Chandler turned his gaze back to the edge of the carpet and let out a self-depricating laugh. ‘Well, I don’t get invited to much, as you might expect.’ He paused, choosing his words. ‘Most people stop bothering after a while.’

‘We didn’t,’ Kent said with a careful laugh, although his voice gentled and softened as a nearby bird sung something through an open window. ‘I didn’t.’

Chandler smiled, but only for a moment before it fell away as he glanced back towards the open wardrobe. ‘I don’t really know where to start.’ 

Neither did Kent, really, not when it came to this, but he’d give it a go. 

‘I wouldn’t worry about Mark and Jess,’ Kent said, good-natured in the face of Chandler’s resignation, as he moved to sit beside him at the foot of the bed. ‘Trust me. Mark’s got the largest collection of denim shirts and retro t-shirts I’ve ever seen. I doubt he even knows there’s a difference between black and white tie.’

Chandler huffed out a laugh, and Kent smiled. He wasn’t even sure if he knew the difference, if he was being honest, but he knew there was one and that was enough.

‘Jess might have more of an idea,’ he continued. ‘But she’s very open minded. You could show up in pajamas and she’d still like you.’

The other man turned to him with an expression that couldn’t possibly have been more disbelieving. 

Kent smiled with half his mouth, glanced across Chandler’s features and nudged his shoulder with his own. ‘Actually, she might even _prefer_ it if you did. What an anecdote that would be.’

He wasn’t kidding. Jess probably would think it was hilarious and try and get him in each and every photograph, just for the laughs.

‘God,’ Chandler said with a heavy sigh, ‘what do you see in me?’

Kent had an answer for that. ‘I liked the look of you, sir.’

Chandler laughed in a way that seemed almost surprised he could do it at all, then lowered his head to rest on Kent’s shoulder, tucking his nose against Kent’s neck. He breathed deeply, in measured breaths, though whether it was supposed to be calming Kent couldn’t tell. Kent leaned into him anyway, still reveling in the fact that they fit. That Chandler felt safe (safe? Was safe the word?) enough to do this. He smelled wonderful, like warm cotton just out of the dryer (probably was, knowing him) and Kent felt a rush of something that defied even his own logic and reasoning. He’d learnt long ago not to question it.

Kent pressed a kiss to the side of his head and said, ‘Come on, then. Let’s get this sorted.’

They probably wouldn’t. It would probably take another three days and a dark evening, one where Chandler didn’t say much and Kent couldn’t do anything about it. They both had them, for different reasons and at different times. It didn’t mean they had to live in fear, dreading them before they arrived. If they started doing that they wouldn’t have time for much else, so instead Kent tugged at Chandler’s shoulder.

Even if they got nowhere by the end of the evening, they could say they tried. Chandler never usually believed that was enough, but Kent did, so it was him who stood in front of the row of clothes they’d managed to fit into Kent’s small wardrobe with an appraising expression. Chandler hovered somewhere near his shoulder.

Kent didn’t really know where to start either, but that was mainly because he didn’t think there was a bad choice available.

'There's an awful lot of Cambridge blue in here.' 

Chandler turned to him with a look that implied he knew exactly what Kent was insinuating, and that he wasn’t the first.

'I've been a London boy all my life.'

Kent dropped the sleeve he’d been holding. 'You're joking.'

'I'm not,’ Chandler said, almost smirking as he walked towards where he stood.

'I can’t imagine anyone calling you a a London boy.' 

'No,’ Chandler said, coming to a snug stop beside him. ‘I can't say they have.'

Kent turned away, unable to repress the coming smile. ‘Probably because you’ve got an accent a bit like the BBC.’

‘Problem?’

(He could tease when he wanted to).

Kent let him have the smile anyway. ‘Not at all.' 

Chandler didn’t laugh, but he did leave a kiss on the nape of Kent’s neck. That was much the same thing, really.

‘North London,’ Chandler said, after a beat. ‘Northwest.’

‘Harrow?’ Kent asked, smiling. Only half joking.

There was a pause, just a second too long, before Chandler sighed. ‘My mother liked Hampstead.’ 

Kent got a distinct feeling that that was all he was going to say on the matter. He didn’t press; he didn’t want to. Instead he reached an arm out to curl around Chandler’s lower back, draw him close. Closer, anyway. It was Chandler who pulled the last few inches and rested his chin on Kent’s head.

‘On a similar train of thought,’ he began, and Kent could almost feel the change in his voice, the humour. ‘Are you actually from Kent?’ 

Kent chuckled and pressed his fingers into Chandler’s side. ‘That would just be cruel.’

The taller man nodded at nothing with raised eyebrows, as if that was the most rational thing he’d heard in years.

‘Anyway, you know I’m not,’ Kent continued, only musing until he realised the logic and pulled away slightly to fix the DI with a surprised look. ‘You’ve been waiting to use that line for ages, haven’t you?’ 

Chandler shrugged. ‘I’ve only got about four jokes.’

‘And apparently a lost cause.’ 

‘How kind of you to notice.’

Kent grinned up at him, just because he could, and Chandler lowered his head to brush his mouth against Kent’s. It started as just a soft nudge, but Kent got his hand around the back of Chandler’s neck and he coaxed out another touch, another flick of tongue and muffled exhale. There was more than one method of distraction, after all.

‘You know any of them would do,’ Kent said when they parted, quiet in the ensuing silence, running a finger along the line of Chandler’s waistcoat.

Chandler sighed and rested his cheek against the top of Kent’s head.

‘That’s the problem.’


	3. Chapter 3

‘Ah, Kent!’

He looked up from the paperwork he was double-checking to see Ed walking into the incident room, uncharacteristically without a pile of files tucked in the crook of his arm. Maybe he had learnt the significance of clocking-off time. Though, even as he thought it, Kent knew that he might need a refresher course himself; he and Chandler had been staying past for a few days now, mostly because it was easier to walk out together that way and partly because they’d both convinced themselves that getting most of the forms filled in before they went would be a good idea. 

(He wasn’t really sure why they thought that. Years ago Kent would have just left them for someone else, like people had buggered off and left them for him. But all that passive-aggressive shit wasn’t really his strong point.)

Ed came to a halt near his and Riley’s desks, expression bright. ‘I hear you’re leaving us today.’ 

‘Tomorrow morning,’ Kent clarified, hyperaware of the implication. ‘And not for good.’

‘Of course, what would we do without you?’ 

Riley tittered from where she was sat and nudged Ed’s elbow with her own. ‘What would the boss do without him, y’mean.’

‘Carry on, probably,’ Kent muttered as he ferried the papers in his care over to a filing cabinet, and although he thought no one had heard him Riley swatted at his side.

None of the others took any notice. 

‘Well, give my congratulations to the happy couple,’ Ed continued with a little bow.

‘Er, right.’ Kent eyed him, but took the sentiment at face value. It was kind of him. ‘I’ll let them know.’

‘Yeah, we’ll be more than fine without you,’ Mansell added, appearing from the direction of the kettle. He clapped a hand on Ed’s shoulder has he passed. ‘You an’ me’ll go out, eh, Eddie?’

Buchan looked skeptical. ‘I’ve actually pencilled in this weekend for a good dig around one of the antiquarian bookshops I’ve not been to yet.’

‘Both days?’

‘It’s rather large.’ 

‘I didn’t know they came in any other variety than tiny.’ 

‘Then perhaps you should expand your horizons, Finlay. I assure you there’s room for two in the aisles of this one.’

It was Mansell’s turn to look dubious. Ed carried on regardless, turning to Kent with an expression that said he was vaguely pleased with himself. (It wasn’t everyday one of them managed to get Mansell to shut up.)

‘Speaking of which, I don’t suppose your newlyweds would have an interest in anything…?’ 

‘I think the only way Mark’s obtained a book in the past four years is pinching them from me.’ Kent chuckled. ‘Jess isn’t much better. Though, if you happened to come across anything related to Hardy… well, I’ve another friend who’s mad on him, and it’s her birthday in the autumn.’

Ed looked intrigued, nodding slowly. ‘That’s something to think about. I’ll keep an eye out.’

‘If you would. Last year I got her socks. I need to redeem myself.’ 

Mansell virtually _cackled_ from where he’d sat himself back down with the dregs of the day’s coffee (he really didn’t care about the state of his drink, as long as it had caffeine in it and smelled vaguely right). ‘Even you couldn’t get away with that.’

Kent pointedly ignored him with a slight smirk. ‘I’ll have you know she was perfectly happy with them.’

‘What, three-pack on offer, was it?’ His tone was teasing rather than biting, but Kent still narrowed his eyes at him when Mansell nodded backwards towards Chandler’s office. ‘You’d best try harder with his nibs. I doubt he’d go for socks.’

‘You’re nearing a line, Mansell.’ 

‘Does anyone know when his birthday is, anyway?' 

Kent bit back the answer—he knew, of course. Spring; it suited Chandler, really, even though he thought it didn’t. Miles bought him the same bottle of whiskey every year, the very same single-malt Chandler had brought him during the Ripper case. For a brief moment Kent had wondered if they just kept handing back and forth the same bottle, never quite getting around to opening it, until he remembered he was considering Skip and the boss and not his slightly mental group of friends. 

‘That reminds me,’ Riley said, shoving an envelope she’d suddenly dug out of a drawer in Kent’s general direction. ‘You couldn’t deliver this for me, could you?’ 

‘You’ve only met them once or twice,’ he replied, although he took it from her anyway and shoved it alongside his computer.

Riley looked up from the last remnants of paperwork and grinned at him. ‘Yes, and they were lovely. Much nicer than you.’

‘Oi!’

She ignored his mock outburst. ‘Saves me the postage, anyway.’ 

Kent resisted the urge to roll his eyes and settled for muttering, ‘Charming,’ instead.

Mansell blindly reached for his keys. ‘Right, I’m off,’ he said, and after a pause settled his gaze and waggling eyebrows on Kent. ‘Tell the boss, would you?’

‘Oh, piss off.’

‘You love me.’ 

‘As I said before, there’s a thin line and you’re awfully close.’

‘Danger’s my middle name.’

‘No, it’s not. It’s Trevor.’

‘No, it isn’t.’

‘It is now, in my book.’ Kent said and crossed his arms, as if that was the last word. ‘Didn’t you say you were going somewhere?’

‘All right, all right,’ Mansell said, holding up both hands. ‘I know when I’m not wanted.’ 

Riley and Kent chorused, ‘No you don’t,’ in the style of Moriarty as Mansell made his way out, raising two fingers to them as he went. They looked at each other once the door slammed and grinned.

‘He loves it,’ Riley said, wrinkling her nose in Kent’s direction.

Kent shrugged and made to walk back to his desk, throwing a smile over his shoulder. ‘Course he does.’

It was a comfortable arrangement, theirs. Infuriating, sometimes, but comfortable. He was halfway to picking up another in the line of case files, cataloguing another of the petty violent crime they’d cleared up months ago, when he found himself glancing towards Chandler’s office instead. He’d always done it, he supposed, but he was trying not to now. At least, not as often. Riley would definitely make some sort of comment, wouldn’t she, but as Chandler kneaded the back of his neck Kent couldn’t not look. He noticed too much not to. He sort of wished he didn’t, that he didn’t have a catalogue of things he knew were markers, but that would involve going back to a time before he’d met Chandler and he definitely didn’t want _that_. 

They’d had a hundred variations of ‘I’ve been a copper since before you were in nappies, keep your hat on,’ from Miles over the past few days, ever since Chandler said he’d be out of the office. Of course they all knew Kent would be too, and exactly where they’d be, but they kept their sarky comments to themselves within the vicinity of the station. It didn’t stop Chandler from worrying. Kent doubted he’d taken a voluntary day off since he was at university, and even then he probably had to be prostrate with illness before the thought entered his mind.

Kent swallowed around something dry and uncomfortable as he watched Chandler leaf through the pile of paperwork on his desk. He still didn’t understand why he’d agreed. Offered. He didn’t even know which verb suited what had happened. All he knew is that he was half thrilled and half dreading it, and he couldn’t really tell what Chandler felt. But when could he ever? In between each daily dose of ‘Miles, you will remember to—’ and ‘Miles, are you sure—’ was a Chandler who slept easy, who pulled Kent to his chest, who weaved their fingers together when Kent wasn’t expecting it.

The man was a bloody enigma.

A hand landed on his arm; Kent tore his attention away from Chandler and looked down to find Riley watching him with a sentimental expression.

‘I’m sure you’ll be fine, love,’ she said, giving his wrist a slight squeeze.

Kent sighed as her hand slipped away. ‘It’s not me I’m worried about.’

‘What, that big lump?’ Riley honestly did look like she was about to laugh. ‘He’d never admit it but he’s softer than the rest of us.’

Kent was about to say that yes, he knows, he’d be in a better position than the rest of them to know when she silenced him with a look.

‘And not just about you.’ 

He fought the urge to sigh again, and only just about won. ‘I know.’

‘Then what’s your problem?’ 

‘I don’t know.’ 

‘Come off it, then! You can’t possibly be worried about him showing you up?’

Kent barked out a laugh. Certainly not—more like the other way around. Which didn’t make any sense because it was his friends’ wedding, he knew more people there, he’d be the one more likely to make a mess of it out of the two of them because he’s got more chance and more reason to. He’d probably feel better knowing that someone had said something similar to Chandler. Someone who wasn’t him, who didn’t have a vested interest in his being comfortable for the twenty-four hours they’d be away would reassure him that they weren’t completely barking. Except they probably were, so that was that. Miles might have said something, actually, but he _was_ barking and his brand of advice was something more akin to ‘wind your neck in’ or ‘clear off and enjoy yourself,’ neither of which were ideal.

Still, it was Miles. Chandler would probably take it to heart. 

‘God, I’m lucky Mansell’s buggered off home,’ Kent said, dragging a hand over his face. ‘He’d never let me live this down.’

‘I won’t, at this rate.’ Riley was trying to sound as if she was issuing a warning, but the warm smile that followed undermined her. ‘Come on, spit it out. Something’s still bothering you, isn’t it?

‘I just…’ Kent began, a little bit unsure if he should be saying anything in the first place. ‘I just don’t understand why he agreed to go with me, that’s all.’

‘Have you considered the option that it’s because he wants to?’

‘The question still remains.’

Riley shook her head, amused but disbelieving. ‘You’re a pillock.’ 

‘Ta.’

‘So’s he.’

‘I’m sure he appreciates the sentiment.’ Miles said, sidling up to them with a half-eaten packet of biscuits. ‘Anyway, you know what he was like!’

‘Where’d you come from?’ Kent asked, half-seriously. ‘Do you just listen to everyone’s conversations?’

(Miles did have a habit of popping up where you least expected him, and of knowing things he wasn’t supposed to, after all.)

‘There’s not much else to do around here at the moment, is there?’ He shrugged, and countered Kent’s long-suffering look by conspicuously offering the biscuits to Riley and not him. ‘Look, kid. He was prepped for a career filled with fancy dinners and small talk before he got shoved in with us and we fixed all that. He can handle himself at a piffling wedding.’ 

Kent sighed. ‘You haven’t met my friends.’

‘I have,’ Miles countered, although Kent couldn’t remember if he was telling the truth or not. ‘They seemed normal enough.’

‘There’s an open bar.’ 

Kent and Riley shared a significant look, although its impact was lessened by her taking another bite out of a digestive.

Miles was undeterred. ‘Well, keep him off the voddy and you’ll be spared any fisticuffs.’

‘Oh, aren’t you inspiring confidence?' 

‘Lay off it, Kent. You’ll be fine, he’ll be fine, your friends will be fine. How mad could they get?’ Miles shot him a look that said he wasn’t looking for an actual answer. ‘Stop pissing about here and _go home_.’

‘Never have truer words been spoken, Skip,’ Riley said, grinning at them both as she got to her feet, coat in hand, and took Kent’s arm. ‘Come on, you. If you want I’ll treat you to a cappuccino.’

Kent overdid a sigh but reached for his own jacket nonetheless. ‘You do spoil me.’

‘Have you seen how much those frothy monstrosities cost?’ Riley shook her head and adjusted her ponytail before reaching for her wallet. ‘Hand me a flat white any day.’

‘You offered.'

*

Kent would have liked a cappuccino when he had to get up at the veritable crack of dawn the next morning.

He muttered ‘I thought taking the car was supposed to eliminate this sort of nonsense,’ into the pillow as Chandler pressed a kiss to the bare nape of his neck. All his words served to do was make Chandler chuckle, the vibration pressed along Kent’s spine, and Kent cursed his partner’s propensity to wake early with practiced ease. Except he’d actually had a proper night’s sleep, a good eight or nine hours of solid rest interrupted only once when Chandler had come to bed and slotted himself behind Kent’s back, so when Chandler pulled at his hand and mentioned something about a shower Kent didn’t protest.

Even so, he never would be one of those people who could spring out of bed, and although he usually worked his way out of it by the time he had to be in the office he still found himself vaguely annoyed at the time, at the light, at the time it took to dry. Possibly even at the way Chandler managed to be chipper— _chipper_ , there was a word he hadn’t expected to be using to describe Chandler—when Kent was in the sort of mood that left him unable to settle on which jumper would be most appropriate. 

He was used to Chandler’s particular vision of casual: the crisp shirt, cashmere, a singular pair of jeans that cost just about as much as a handful of Kent’s. It took longer to come into being than Kent’s well-loved hoodie and trainers, soft at the elbows, so when Kent popped his head back into the bathroom and said he was borrowing Chandler’s keys he found more skin than towel, ruffled hair, the splotch at the hollow of his throat that was only mostly the fault of hot water.

It was only the clawing anxiety that occasionally surfaced at the back of his throat that stopped Kent from doing anything about it. Chandler nodded, Kent swallowed and ducked away. As much as he’d like the distraction, it wasn’t much of one. Not really. He bit the inside of his cheek as he lugged their overnight bags through the front door, half wanting to say sod it and just go back to bed. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d changed his mind like that.

The still-damp curls at the nape of his neck cooled in the breeze, stung cold. There was an odd opalescence to the air that wasn’t fog; Kent didn’t like it, he never had after his incident with the Brooks brothers. It stank of something hidden, something that he couldn’t see. But it was just what the air was like, what the light was like, something off that the city did and he knew it was stupid, so he aligned their bags in the boot of the car and let next door’s cat rub against his leg, purring.

Kent scratched the creature between the ears. If it could manage London’s streets, he could. He was a policeman, for God’s sake. Miles’ voice echoed in his head: _pull yourself together, man_.

He already had, really. But as much as he had, there was a part of him that wouldn’t calm down until they got there. Until he was convinced that he hadn’t made it all up in his head and Chandler wasn’t going to shoot him an odd look when he walked back into the house and ask why he ever thought he’d agreed to such a preposterous idea in the first place.

The cat meowed loudly, bumping Kent’s hand as he stilled. 

‘Sorry,’ he said, half reflex. ‘Got to go.’

The meow that followed him back into the flat said that even the cat thought that was a feeble excuse, but it was true and Chandler was already downstairs by the time Kent had decided against boiling the kettle. He looked… well, he looked decidedly calm about the whole thing, but Kent knew he had experience in holding down a professional exterior. To an extent. But he’d liked to have thought he could tell if he was having second thoughts, or a bit of what Miles called his _moments_ ; he never wanted to cause one, either.

Kent didn’t think he (or they, whoever was taking the responsibility for it) had. Probably not. They’d taken every precaution: requested the same day off at different intervals, taken separate rooms (‘Two,’ Jess had said when Kent had rung her to ask, ‘in our names, not yours. Just in case you want to get up to some freaky shit while you’re away.’ Kent didn’t think that was likely but had thanked her anyway), tried not to say anything about it, kept their heads down. Which, if he thought about it, probably was a bit weird since their team was usually the awkward one out, the ones attracting all the trouble.

But no one had said anything.

So he tried to push the knot of worry that he’d tied away as best he could and smiled at Chandler as he approached, leaning towards him and catching his waist with a hand. Chandler met him halfway for the kiss, and in a blissful moment he scrunched his hand into the cashmere (another variant of blue this time, darker and almost black in the right light) and forgot everything except the way their noses slotted together. It was an odd thing to notice, even for him, but as they parted Kent couldn’t help but indulge in a gentle nudge. 

‘What d’you end up going for then?’ he asked, moving to lean on the surface next to the hob. ‘Personal day or sick leave?’

Chandler knew what he meant. They both had enough of either version stored up they were virtually interchangeable.

‘Personal,’ he said, collecting his phone and wallet with half a smile. ‘A bit more difficult to explain, but easier to corroborate.’

Kent chuckled. ‘Same.’ He rubbed at a mark on the counter, vaguely wondered where it came from as his mind wandered; that was probably one of the perks of working for the police. Sometimes personal meant personal, and no one asked. They all had something wrong with them, after all.

Chandler caught his eye and motioned towards the door. ‘Shall we?’ 

‘Mmhm.’ Kent hummed and followed Chandler’s lead, one hand digging around in a pocket for the set of keys.

He found two, and smiled to himself; he pressed the second set into Chandler’s hand when they’d crossed out into the morning light and the DI had realised he hadn’t got them anymore. He tried to ignore the brush of their fingers but he’d never been very good at doing that. 

‘Traffic shouldn’t be too bad yet,’ Kent said, the words almost a nervous habit as turned to lock the front door. 

‘I wouldn’t speak so soon.’ 

Kent laughed and gentled a touch against Chandler’s side as they went to approach the car. ‘You’ve got no confidence, you have.’

‘Not about the state of this country’s motorways,’ Chandler said, doing a very good imitation of Miles’ best grumble, although he was smiling.

*

They stopped at the first services on the M25, finally free of London’s badly-equipped roads. The Today programme had just reached its midpoint, still overly enthusiastic about the mere fact it was a Friday. Kent would normally have been wildly annoyed, except Chandler had a way with well-placed comments that might just rival Miles’ time-honed skill and Kent had lost the will to be suitably irked before they’d reached the Hammersmith flyover. He didn’t think he’d been in this good a mood before nine in the morning for years.

 Still, a coffee wouldn’t hurt.

‘Want anything?’ he asked as he rounded the back of the car, the air a little warmer now the sun had overtaken the horizon.

Chandler nodded; he didn’t have to say anything else. Kent knew his order. Always had, ever since that first case after the Ripper, when Chandler’s drink joined all theirs on the polystyrene trays. That was one of the few things that hadn’t changed. 

‘Right you are then,’ he said with the flash of a smile, sounding uncannily like Miles on a good day and Chandler huffed out a laugh as the wind picked up.

The image stayed with Kent as he crossed the car park; he still couldn’t quite believe that they were doing this at all, let alone doing it with such lighthearted moments, and he resisted the urge to pinch the skin on the underside of his wrist. They’d probably stop for lunch later on, if only to stagger the arrival time. Kent smiled at the thought, nodding amicably to an older couple as they passed. 

(He really needed to stop this smiling at nothing lark. People were going to start thinking he was a bit unhinged.)

He eyed the queue with mild distaste, but joined it nonetheless. Although there seemed to be every other gadget under the sun built in to Chandler’s car (so many that even he didn’t know what most of them did) there were no coffee-making facilities. There was room for some, though. Sometimes Kent had no idea why Chandler maintained such a large car in more or less central London, it had to be a pain in the arse sometimes, but that was coming from a man who was oddly sentimental about his Vespa so he was one to talk. 

Even so, the Vespa made more sense. Not that Chandler, or any of the others, would admit that. They took too much pleasure in taking the piss out of him for that. Even that ( _that_ , of all things; he was going soft, let alone Chandler) made him smile, and the harassed barista looked grateful for his good mood. He didn’t blame her. Some of the faces he’d glimpsed during the wait looked as he usually felt at this time in the morning.

Kent took the risk of popping into the newsagents while he waited for his order. There were more than a handful of others to fill before his, after all, and it would probably be in his best interest to pick up a paper in case they swapped later on. Chandler might seem calm, even to Kent (who would be best-placed to guess if he wasn’t), but Kent doubted that he’d be able to stop his mind wandering if he ended up in the passenger seat with nothing to do with himself. He’d appreciate the gesture, anyway.

He bought a pack of Jelly Tots too, mainly because he wanted to.

The odd double-take Chandler had shot him somewhere on the M4 when he opened them was worth it, if he was honest.

* 

They met traffic outside Bristol, around the same time Kent began to get antsy. The drastic slowdown of speed didn’t help. He worried his fingers in his lap, picked at the skin around his nails. If he could have paced he would have, but sat in the passenger seat of a car in almost standstill traffic didn’t lend itself to the motion. He watched pedestrians pass them instead, human steps overtaking the cars, and didn’t realise how fervently he’d been biting his lip until Chandler laid a hand on Kent’s.

‘All right?’ he asked, flexing his other hand on the steering wheel when Kent turned to look at him.

Kent nodded; Chandler stroked a thumb across his knuckles until the traffic began moving again and he needed to switch gears. The ghost of his touch lingered through the next roundabout, the next two sets of lights. Kent rubbed at the skin with disquiet fingers until he annoyed himself and pinned one hand beneath his leg.

‘My friends,’ Kent began, the feeling that he needed to warn Chandler suddenly overwhelming. ‘They might get a bit rowdy.’

‘Might they?’ 

‘They will,’ he amended.

Chandler didn’t look towards him, just checked over his shoulder before switching lanes; Kent didn’t realise he was smiling until the indicator switched itself off.

‘I’m sure I’ve seen worse.’

Kent was sure he had, but he still said, ‘There’ll be champagne dripping down the walls.’ 

‘The reception’s outside.’

‘Dripping down the hedgerows, then.’

He’d said it in all seriousness but as soon as the words sunk in Kent couldn’t help but chuckle. Chandler caught his eye and Kent was distracted from making a comment about drunk hedgehogs when he saw Chandler’s wide smile, the easy curve to his mouth that only popped up every once in a while. It really did brighten up his face—or, at least, it did until he did a double take at a nearby road sign and swore under his breath. 

‘Shall I propose a comparison?’ Chandler asked once they’d turned around and managed to find themselves on the right road.

‘If you want.’

‘Better or worse than the station’s christmas parties?’

Kent couldn’t help but grin at that. Chandler had come to one, that first year, then never shown his face again. He wanted none of the impromptu solidarity. Kent didn’t blame him; he probably wouldn’t have bothered, either, but some of the goings-on were just too good to miss. There always seemed to be someone clearing out their desk the morning after, someone else having to be packed into a cab at just gone nine, some CCTV tape from the interior lifts that had gone suspiciously missing only to show up in the canteen’s bins two weeks later. Marie from traffic swore on her life that her son was conceived on the disused back stairwell; Kent still wasn’t sure whether he believed her. Even Chandler generally gave the toilets a wide birth for a few days afterwards, to give them time to build up their strength again. So, yes, well, the police weren’t above some carnage. 

Compared to them, Kent’s friends suddenly seemed relatively normal. Nothing illegal, just… questionable. Mark had burst into a club’s back room once, halfway through his refresher course and off his head drunk, and spent five minutes pointing out each and every code violation until Kent had caught his wrist and dragged him back out into the drizzly winter air. There were too many instances involving Maggie to count, she was one for the record books, but empirically those were all more embarrassing than anything else; they laughed about them now, even the one involving their old maths teacher’s son. Then there was that time Kent had come home from a double shift wanting nothing more than a cup of tea and bed to find Mark and Jess in a pile on the sofa and what looked like their entire drinks cabinet emptied into the mess of glasses on the coffee table; he’d ignored their giggling apologies and marched straight back out to sit on the doorstep for twenty minutes, or however long it took for them to get their clothes back on.

So, all in all: not that bad. He hoped.

They came to a halt at another set of lights; Chandler turned to him, gaze searching for an answer but the corners of his mouth betrayed amusement.

‘Better.’

‘Then I think we’ll be fine.’

Kent smiled at his hands, still folded in his lap, and only picked up his gaze when they moved again. On the pavement a young woman was walking a bulldog and for a giddy moment, the creature reminded Kent of Miles.

* 

Kent hadn’t really known what to expect from Somerset, if anything. The last time he’d been anywhere near the place he must have been only a teenager—maybe even only barely—and that was only en route to Cornwall. His parents had been mad to drive down there, especially with him and Erica in the car. Maybe they drove them mad. (Probably.)

There was, as far as he was concerned, a ridiculous amount of sheep.

In an odd way, he could see why Mark and Jess liked it. _In a way_. Even with the bright early afternoon sunlight, an example of one of Britain’s good weather days, he sort of missed the familiar streets of their end of London. There was almost too much open space, but that didn’t seem to matter as much as he and Chandler made their way out of the car and onto the gravelled car park of the address Jess had texted him a few weeks before along with their reservation details. Even from where he stood at the boot, in the shadow Chandler cast, he spotted Mark’s silhouette in the relative distance.

‘Ay up.’ 

Chandler looked at him as if he’d actually morphed into a northerner. ‘What?’ 

Kent nodded towards the silhouetted figure. ‘Twelve o’clock.’

Mark raised a hand and walked towards them; Kent shot Chandler a significant glance. He just smiled with half his mouth and turned back to whatever it was he was doing in the back seat. The band t-shirt and denim button-down uniform hadn’t been a lie, and the evidence was stood before them with the addition of boots that looked like he’d nicked them off Jamie Hince.

‘I see you’ve arrived in one piece.’

(It was a typical opening. Some things didn’t change.)

‘How many were you expecting?’ Kent said, extending a hand and accepting the awkward one-armed hug.

‘Oh, I don’t know. Several?’

He ignored Kent’s sarky glance, save for a quick grin, and nodded past Kent’s shoulder. ‘What’s with the Chelsea tractor, then?’ 

‘Well, you assimilated quickly. Barely been gone five minutes.’

Mark shrugged, as if there was no point in even wondering, and caught Chandler’s eye. ‘And you must be the voice in the background.’

‘Joseph Chandler, yes.’

They shook hands, amicable, and Kent wondered which one of them was doing more of the appraising.

‘That’s a new title for you, sir,’ Kent said with a smiling glance over his shoulder; it was going better than expected.

(Not that he’d really know when he’d expected.) 

‘Ooh, _sir_.’

Kent winced; it had slipped out unintentionally, something they really shouldn’t enjoy doing but they still like the sarcasm of it. One of their few offhand things. It probably shouldn’t be trotted out in public. For a moment there, just for a split second, Kent might have thought that he wasn’t. They always had to be careful about getting too comfortable.

‘Piss off,’ he said, possibly bristling, until Chandler brushed a momentary touch against his back. It didn’t stop him from fixing Mark with a look and a warning. ‘I will attempt to break your nose.’

Mark scoffed, unperturbed. ‘Police brutality.’

‘I’ll tell Jess,’ Kent continued, a smile widening with the idea, ‘and _she’ll_ break your nose.’

(It wasn’t the best of his threats, they’ve thrown more interesting things between them, but it’s possibly the most likely to be successful.)

‘You’re like a looking glass into my future, Em.’ 

Kent shrugged. ‘You’ll have to speak to my batty aunt if you want specifics.’

Mark pulled a face before he resettled his gaze on Chandler, who was stood once again at Kent’s shoulder. ‘You may have noticed, but we've spent years perfecting this piss-taking routine.’

‘He gets enough practice at work to keep his hand in,’ Chandler said, not missing a beat. 

Mark laughed. ‘You’ll fit in round here.’ 

Kent forced himself not to grin. It was nice to know someone else thought so to, even if it was Mark. There was an odd quirk to Chandler’s mouth that suggested there was a similar thought going through his mind and it made his stomach flip but Kent wasn’t going to give either one of them the satisfaction.

‘How’s Jess, then?’ The question was pointed but honest. ‘I can’t imagine she’s calm about any of this.’

Mark sighed—or huffed, it was too close to tell—and dug around in a pocket. What he meant was that Kent might as well have been talking about him, but he’d never come close to admitting it. Kent knew what he was looking for—Mark had always carried a single cigarette around, ever since Kent had first met him. Never smoked it, not since just after the millennium, but just kept it for when he was nervous. When he would have had a smoke, a decade ago. A vestigial habit—something to do with his hands.

‘Don’t remind me.’ He twitched the cigarette between his fingers, then pulled a face and shoved it back in a pocket. ‘We’ve been arguing about the minutiae of sparkly versus spangly for about four days.’ 

‘Come again?’

‘Oh, it’s not even related. Just pedantic linguistics.’ 

Kent grinned. ‘That sounds more like it.’

Mark mirrored the gesture, but still kept a hand in his pocket. ‘Anyway, there’s only a couple hours left now so they’ve probably started on the gin and tonics. I’ve been banished. There was a suggestion that I should go for a pint. I don’t suppose you’d fancy one?’

Funnily enough, Kent didn’t. He doubted that Chandler did, either, but he still looked to check. They couldn’t rule anything out yet, and Kent tried to ignore the creeping feeling he had that Mark was already thinking of the best way to describe this to Jess. He probably should have sent a primer.

‘You suppose correctly.’ He shook his head with an apologetic smile. ‘It’s on me next time.’

‘Suit yourself,’ Mark said, shrugging, although he threw a dubious look in his direction. ‘Actually, yeah, suit yourself. I hope you aren’t planning on showing up in that.’

Kent scoffed, though he was suppressing the urge to turn and check Chandler’s expression. ‘If you’d give us a chance, we just might have the time to change.’

‘I’ll let you get on with it, then.’

Kent ignored the heavy implication. ‘I could say the same to you.’

Mark turned with a noncommittal wave. ‘You know me, I’m a last minute kind of guy.’

‘To your discredit,’ Kent called after him, over the crunching of the gravel. 

‘By the way—’ Mark stopped mid-step and returned in a stride to where he’d stood before. He pushed his hands in his pockets and looked far too pleased to foretell anything good. ‘I had a text from Maggie.' 

‘Oh, yes?’

(That time Kent didn’t even hide the fact he glanced to Chandler, trying to share a knowing look.)

‘She’s coming. And she says there’s no place better to come up with a list of creative ways of saying _I told you so_ than a packed train.’

Kent groaned and turned to warn Chandler. ‘Brace yourself.’

He was half-smiling. ‘I managed last time.'

'You were on the periphery last time,’ Kent said, his tone almost comically dark.

Mark smirked. ‘Don’t worry, she’ll be subtle.’

‘That’s what I’m worried about.’ Kent tried to ignore the urge to worry the end of his sleeve. ‘She’s far, far too good at subtle.’

‘She learnt from the best.’ He shot Kent a look that spoke volumes—it only served to remind him that they knew far, far too much. Somehow the tables had turned—wasn’t he supposed to be the one telling embarrassing stories here? ‘And she’s had years to refine the craft.’

‘That’s enough about my past.’

Mark winked at them both. ‘And your age.’ 

Chandler might have scoffed, then, but covered it up with a well-executed cough. Only Kent noticed.

‘Best get your bags in before they get nicked,’ Mark continued, nodding towards the building behind them. ‘There aren’t any coppers of your caliber on the beat around here.’

If Kent thought about it—and he would, but only for a second—there might have been a compliment in there. Somewhere.

It wasn’t even really that backhanded. 

*

Chandler looked bloody brilliant in a suit. 

But, of course, Kent already knew that.

It didn’t stop him from enjoying the view, though, as he leant against the door jamb and Chandler fiddled with every bit of his clothing that could be fiddled with. Kent had given up on his own years ago, when he first realised that he’d never quite achieve the same effect as Chandler’s bespoke things. He did his best but there was only so much something off the rack could do and even in his best Kent sometimes felt a bit scruffy. In the end he’d gone with the suit he kept for court appearances (not that he had many) and Chandler had settled on something Kent thought made him look awfully distinguished.

Though he didn’t say. He was sure Chandler already knew what he thought. Kent was biased, wasn’t he?

‘Time?’

‘What? Oh,’ Kent pushed back a sleeve to check his watch. ‘Yeah, you’re fine for time.’

Chandler shot him a knowing look and Kent turned away, suddenly a bit too hot. The edge of the carpet became incredibly interesting; that, and wondering exactly how they were going to do this. He’d had too long to think about it already, and watching Chandler’s shadow check his cufflinks only made him wonder if he’d misjudged and he was panicking. There really was no easy way out now, as much as Kent wished there could be, if they needed it.

(But they’d known that going in, hadn’t they?)

‘Are you sure?’ He couldn’t not ask. He almost felt like he had to offer an out. ‘I could say you’d come down with something, if…’

‘If what?’ Chandler was smiling as he said it, the curve of his mouth oddly comforting. 

Kent sighed and gave in to the urge to bite at his thumbnail. ‘I don’t know.’

(He really didn’t. It was part of what made him nervous.)

There was a momentary silence as Chandler adjusted his tie—not that Kent could see a thing wrong with it—but when he slid his eyes away to study the reflective tile of the floor Chandler’s fingers pulled his hand away from his mouth and tilted his head towards him.

‘And I thought I’d be the nervous one,’ he said, gentling a touch against Kent’s chin with a small smile. ‘Though I suppose there’s still time.’

Kent actually chuckled, leaning into Chandler’s palm. ‘Are you sure, then?’

‘As much as I can be.’

He shrugged, although he was happier with the answer than the gesture suggested. ‘That’ll have to do.’ 

‘It works for me,’ Chandler said, mirroring Kent’s motions but underlining them with a sliver of a smile. 

‘Does it?’ 

‘Do questions work for you?’

‘Apparently not.’ Kent barked out a small laugh and wrapped his fingers around Chandler’s wrist, feeling for his pulse. ‘Skip was right.’ 

‘I won’t ask,’ Chandler said, voice rough and amused.

‘Shall we get on?’ Kent asked as he absentmindedly stroked his thumb against the inside of his wrist.

Kent really didn’t want to imagine them walking in late, with everyone’s eyes on them. He’d probably keel over out of embarrassment since there was no way they could maintain whatever front it was they were going with faced with that sort of scrutiny.

Chandler glanced at his watch then back at Kent’s concerned gaze. ‘In a moment.’

He was about to ask why, what on earth was there left to do, when Chandler stepped into his space for a kiss, the first since they’d left London. It wasn’t thorough, but suggested that it might be. Could be, when he was least likely to look. Probably already was; Kent had forgotten what he was supposed to be worrying about in favour of their slanting of lips, the gentle way Chandler nudged his nose and rubbed a thumb along his browbone. Kent didn’t want to dislodge anything Chandler had put in place, he was the best-suited of all of them to know about how clothes could be armour, but he had to hold some part of him, touch and something grounding. He went for Chandler’s shoulder, fingers splayed as he cradled Chandler’s neck in the crook of his elbow. Too much? Probably. But Chandler wasn’t letting him pull away for his sake and he knew, didn’t he? That Kent needed too much. Needed him. Loved him, if he was brave enough to think of it in such a concrete term. 

Sometimes he was.

He even laughed against Chandler’s mouth as the man straightened his tie as they kissed; trust him to be able to do it without looking. 

(Kent wasn’t surprised. He quite liked it.)

*

‘Mark’s mother,’ Kent said, leaning towards Chandler where they stood near the church gate, nodding towards a woman in an almost violently patterned dress. ‘Came to stay once. Somehow managed to use all my washing up liquid in the space of a long weekend.’

‘How…?’ Chandler trailed off, glancing between her extravagant fascinator and Kent’s amused expression. 

‘I didn’t ask.’

There was a short chuckle and, ‘I find that’s generally the best course of action.’

‘Not great for a policeman,’ Kent countered, and they exchanged grins that could have been misconstrued as those between good mates. Which, in a way, he supposed they were, and before his face had a chance to suggest anything more untoward he nodded towards another of the familiar faces. ‘Jess’s sister. Younger, I think. Might have only just left school. Only seen her once or twice.’

‘No name?’

‘Zoë, I think.’ Kent turned from where he’d been craning his neck trying to decide if he recognised the teenager with her armed with a wry smile he’d stolen from the skipper. ‘What, you interested?’

Chandler huffed. ‘Why is it that everyone’s starting to sound just like Miles?' 

‘Force of habit.’

Kent grinned even as he said it; Chandler didn’t disappoint and returned it with his own amused smile. They really did seem to fit into the atmosphere of the crowd, all joviality and good-natured tones. Miles and Riley were right. They could manage it.

In any situation where he and Chandler had been on their own, Kent might have reached out a hand and touched him, just rested his fingers against his warm skin and bone and muscle, the fabric that still held a remnant of memory of him. Instead he grinned at a nearby patch of dandelions and kept his hands firmly in his pockets, the epitome of what he hoped seemed like disinterested nonchalance. The way Chandler had run his fingers through the back of his hair back in the hotel room, at the last moment as they stole some confidence from the way their mouths always felt like home, just made for a more convincing image. The memory was just as potent; Kent jumped when his phone went and the shrill sound shocked him out of a bit of a reverie. Chandler watched him recover, a smile playing at the edge of his mouth.

Kent fished it out from his jacket pocket, half annoyed and half thankful the message inadvertently reminded him to switch the phone to silent. The message that flashed up on the screen was from Mansell; he was the only one of them still on duty. Chandler shifted closer to Kent’s elbow as he navigated through the screens and a group of young women passed them, and Kent’s huffed laughter bumped their shoulders. It was the typical shit joke, of course: _Went for a cig and the station burnt down. Not my fault, don’t tell the boss._

‘What?’

‘Nothing,’ Kent replied, brushing his fingers against the back of Chandler’s hand as he straightened his lapels. ‘Just Mansell.’

Chandler made an odd sound, half tut and half sigh. ‘What’s he done now?’

‘Burnt down the station, apparently.' 

The DI just frowned at him, the gentle one that wasn’t dipped in anger or sorrow, just confusion. ‘That’d be headline news.’

The way the sun dappled across his face through the trees made Kent’s smile even wider.

‘Yeah, if it was true. He’s just pulling your leg.’ He grinned as Chandler shook his head, his fair hair brighter in the light. They didn’t get much of that where they’d come from. ‘Shouldn’t have looked so worried about leaving the office to him.’ 

Chandler looked appropriately dubious, but the expression that would have struck something concerned in the space between Kent’s ribs in Whitechapel just seemed endearing stood there outside the crumbling walls of an old village church. As much as Kent adored London, as mental and brilliant and familiar it was, they rarely got light like this. He’d never seen Chandler bathed in summer sun, the grass behind them clean and marred only by footprints, the low grey wall broken with the gentle colour of flowers and moss. He suited it, suited it almost as much as he suited the Georgian house fronts and the Thames and every modern glass tower in the City. For a split second Kent could imagine him with an old country house and a sheepdog and a few more laughter lines.

It was a ridiculous thought, but he enjoyed it while it lasted, with the warmth of sunlight on the back of their necks. He kicked at the beige gravel with the toe of his shoe, hands in pockets. Happiness swelled in his chest as a gentle breeze wafted past them, ruffling the front of Chandler’s hair. Kent smothered the urge to smooth it out for him, touch at his face; sunlight was the best disinfectant, it seemed, and somehow seeing Chandler entirely out of his usual environment wasn’t as odd as Kent might have expected. It almost seemed enlightening.

Kent touched at the back of Chandler’s hand instead. ‘Come on, then.’ 

*

‘Sorry I’m a bit late. Leaves on the sodding line.’

Kent looked up from where he’d been studying the frankly astounding hat the woman sat in front of him had on to find Maggie’s apologetic smile and heavy fringe. She was a bit of an odd chameleon, really, able to seem entirely in place wherever she was. Something Kent had never quite managed.

‘You’re apologizing to the wrong bloke,’ he said, keeping his tone low as she maneuvered herself into the empty space beside him. He didn’t need to, nothing had started up yet, but he had a gut feeling he might need to buy time.

Maggie ignored him. ‘You’ve no idea how many funny looks I got on the train.’

‘I think I can imagine,’ Kent muttered. Just looking at her vertiginous shoes made him feel vaguely unsteady.

She noticed, and crossed her legs with a flourish. ‘You’ve seen much worse from me, Em.’

‘Don’t call me Em.’

Chandler’s face must have done something then because Maggie looked past Kent for a moment and smirked as she turned back to his gaze again. ‘Bit rich coming from where you’re sat.’

Kent might have just blushed. She could always tell, _damn her_. She used to be able to tell before he did. Introduced him to a couple of people and that sort of thing, back when they’d both been wet behind the ears. This was her just getting started. 

Maggie leant forward, arms folded and with an expression of badly contained amusement that only gained ground when she caught Chandler’s eye. ‘Hello again.’

He couldn’t help but follow her line of sight then, not with her looking like that. But, as much as the situation was incredibly odd—even by their own standards—Chandler didn’t look taken aback. He seemed warm, amicable, but that could have just been the sun as it fell through the paned windows. Kent might have thought he looked intrigued. Wary, but intrigued. The thought alone might just spark a smile on his own mouth, but that wasn’t his fault at all. 

Chandler smiled, and said, ‘Hello.’

Maggie just looked between them and grinned.

‘I swear,’ Kent muttered, turning back to her as she leant back against the seat as if she’d answered something unanswerable, ‘it’s like you’re still sixteen.’ 

‘What a way to warm my ancient heart, Emerson.’

‘Not my point.’ 

She tapped his leg with the pointed toe of her shoe. ‘Whose side are we on, then? Groom’s or bride’s?’

‘Dunno. Sort of both.’

Maggie made a dismissive sort of sound and toyed with the fastening of her watch, settling in for whatever was left of the wait. The pattern on the top of her foot caught Kent’s eye, the fading ink rosary half tucked behind stitched leather; she’d got that as soon as she was eighteen, fuck the consequences. Kent hadn’t seen it in years. He suspected the last time was when they still shared a tiny flat in Hammersmith, when she’d pressed her feet into his thigh as they shared a curry and watched whatever useless telly had been on as rainwater dripped into the bucket they’d propped in the sink. That felt like ages ago. It was, really, close to a decade. But it felt like eons.

Then Chandler’s shoulder pressed his and time felt like it came to a standstill, held in place, pinched between fabric.

And Kent stopped wondering.

*

All in all, it was lovely.

He hadn’t imagined a church wedding for them, really, but there was Mark’s mum to think about. She liked a bit of tradition. They made it their own, though: Jess swearing just loud enough when she caught the edge of her heel on a stone step, both of them descending into barely suppressed laughter halfway through, the fabric that was more suited to a slip than a dress, the old school chapel that neither of them had ever been to before in their lives. Somehow they managed to stick two fingers up to the entire institution while kissing it on the cheek.

Even the smokey silver of her dress had worked, somehow similar but softer than the stone floors and not dissimilar to some of Chandler’s suits, though none of those had the same sweeping neckline. He could have done without the milliseconds worth of a significant look she shot them on the way out. He wouldn’t have believed that it had been there at all except for the fact Maggie had elbowed him in the ribs and he’s recoiled enough to catch Chandler with his shoulder. Why they all had to be like this he didn’t know; in the end all he could do was shake his head at Maggie and mouth an awkward _‘sorry_ ’ to Chandler, who just looked bemused.

Somehow, he reckoned that was how the rest of the evening was likely to go.

Kent liked churches, although he didn’t believe—or didn’t know what to believe—but he never really knew where he was up to with them. He was much better versed with the idea of a wedding reception, where there were drinks and people and loud noises that weren’t the creaking of an ancient ceiling. Just like any other party, really, except with mothers. Which should be terrifying, really, said like that but Jess and Mark hadn’t arrived yet so Kent reckoned they’d be safe. The shenanigans wouldn’t start until later; or, at least, the sanctioned ones. Kent was having too much fun trying to see if Chandler could guess which guests were walking around with convictions.

He gave up when it only took Chandler the length of a trip to the toilets to guess that it was Jess’s nan who’d been done for antisocial behaviour.

‘You’re far too good at this,’ Kent murmured as Chandler took up the space at his shoulder again, waving away the waitress offering drinks.

The returning half-smile was warm, easy, almost relaxed. ‘Years of experience, Em.’

Kent shot him a look but it was no use. He’d never told him not to, like he told everyone else, and he _liked_ it. (He was so far gone.)

When it came down to it, Jess and Mark’s first dance was to something by Clean Bandit, suitably upbeat. No one had noticed when he’d slipped his hand into Chandler’s for a split second, or grinned at a nearby hedge when Chandler squeezed his fingers. Then Maggie had dragged him by his shoulder and puppeteered him into some version of dancing that was both enthusiastic and only vaguely in rhythm; he only managed to extricate himself after he’d finished laughing and the song had come to an end. He really should have warned the fella that stood in to take his place—Mark’s brother, he thought, he’d only met him once but that quiff wasn’t something you forgot in a hurry—but he was too busy watching Chandler laughing. That didn’t happen often, and he could have kissed him, but he didn’t. There was a time and place.

Instead he muttered, ‘Not a word,’ as he approached.

Chandler hid a smile behind his glass. ‘Wouldn’t dream of it.’

As it turned out, Chandler and Maggie got on quite well. Or at least better than expected, anyway: she’d slipped off away somewhere after the ceremony, muttering something about hotels and a return train ticket, then popped up again after that spectacle with a two glasses of single-malt scotch. That certainly went down better than the pint Chandler had barely touched. Kent ended up finishing that off himself, watching them both make their way through conversation. It was… odd. Like two halves of his life colliding. By the time he’d finished his drink and they’d got started on Tennyson he was starting to feel distinctly abstract. Though that may have just been the beer; he’d always been a bit of a lightweight.

‘Sorry,’ he began with a brief touch to Maggie’s arm. ‘I’m off to the loo.’ 

‘Off you pop, then,’ she said, shoving gently at his shoulder. ‘He’ll be alright with me, I promise. I’ve given up pouncing.’

A brief glance at Chandler suggested that he agreed with her, just a bit, so Kent didn’t feel guilty about the quick relieved smile he flashed at them both before turning away. It didn’t last too long, though, not with the precedent Maggie had set in the past. He tried to leave the feeling that she might just start spewing stories about his schooldays behind as he made his way around the fringes of people back towards the building. It didn’t quite work until he was on his way back and Jess spotted him from somewhere in the crowd, virtually barreling into his path.

‘Hello, you!’ 

He barely got out a surprised ‘Hi,’ before she grabbed his arm and pulled him into a hug. ‘Oof, Jess, yes, hello.’

Mark caught his eye from where he was talking to his parents, and waved. Kent rolled his eyes from where he’d been pinned against Jess’s shoulder.

‘I suppose congratulations are in order,’ he said, words about as squashed as he was. ‘By the way, I hope you don’t think you’ll be doing this every time you see me.’

‘Don’t be absurd, of course I am. I don’t see you anywhere near enough anymore.’ She held him at arm’s length. 'I'm thrilled, I get to mother you now.'

Kent didn’t even get a chance to try a groan, conspiring to sound as displeased as possible, before she took his face in her hands and kissed him cheek.

'Careful,’ he said, pawing at the inevitable lipstick stain. ‘People might think you've forgotten you've just married Mark.'

'Don't flatter yourself.' She patted his cheek with a grin; he let her. That was how it had always been. 'Anyway, it doesn't matter, because anyone in a five mile radius can tell you've only got eyes for him.'

Kent picked at an invisible bit of loose thread on his sleeve, making a conscious effort not to look in Chandler’s direction. 'I've been told I'm obvious.'

'He's not much better. When he's relaxed.’ Jess eyed him, smothering a laugh, but softened her tone as Kent wound his fingers together. Him and his damn nervous habits. She leant close, feigning a slightly smug form of confidence. 'I saw you both during the ceremony. You could read you two like a book even if you were _blind_.'

A shot of panic coursed through him. 'But we--'

'You don't have to do anything,’ she said quickly, touching at his shoulder. She glanced over her own towards where Kent had left Maggie and Chandler. ‘It's just the way he looks at you when he thinks no one's going to notice.' 

'He doesn't.' 

Jess turned back to him. 'He does.'

'He _doesn't_ —' 

'We're not having this argument, he does and that's that. And it's lovely.'

'What?' 

'He goes all... soft. It's only noticeable because he's such an awkward sod the rest of the time—’

Kent scoffed, deflecting. 'First time he's been called _that_.'

'—But I don’t know, it just… It’s hard to describe.’ 

‘Do you have to?’

Kent wasn’t really sure he needed Jess contemplating his relationship, too. He did enough of that himself.

‘He looks at you like… well, as if he wants to be nearer.’

‘Oh,’ Kent said, before he thought it’d probably be a good idea to shut his mouth.

Jess just watched him. Kent tried to follow the beat of the song that was playing, the switch from bridge to chorus. He recognised it but couldn’t give it a name. Anything but think about the way she was looking at him, then looking at Chandler over his shoulder, then looking back.

'How long has it been now?' she asked, as if that was entirely normal thing to ask someone who was romantically involved with their boss. 

Kent sighed but gave her the answer. 'Nine months.'

'Oh, he's fallen _hard_ ,’ she murmured, in a marveling tone.

He resisted the urge to turn and see what exactly it was about Chandler that was making her sound like that. 'Are you sure you should be telling me this?'

'Well, in my experience…’ She trailed off and gave him a gentle punch to the shoulder. ‘You can sometimes be a bit dense.'

'Jess.'

'But I get your drift. I'll piss off somewhere else now, shall I? I'm sure I can find an cousin somewhere to fawn over my dress with me, you're useless at it.’

'Cheers.' Kent rolled his eyes but was smiling again, and that was something.

'Now go and get that man a drink,’ Jess said, pushing gently at him. ‘He looks like he needs one.'

Kent followed her gaze and found that Chandler had been cornered by a likely well-meaning although altogether too keen woman. Chandler wasn’t keen on _keen_. Maggie caught his eye from where she was stood a little way away, God knows what she was doing but she looked properly apologetic about it now. He shot her a look while he was at it, something sarcastic and a bit derisive, but he didn’t really mean it. Chandler could handle himself. Well, against the criminal lot. Maybe not slightly inebriated relatives in Somerset. They haven’t tested that particular field yet.

Chandler said something and from the set of his mouth Kent could tell he was uncomfortable. Not entirely unhappy, he’d seen that too many times to forget it, but distinctly uncomfortable. Then she laughed and touched Chandler’s arm. He looked slightly pained.

‘Who’s that, then?’ Kent asked, squinting and leaning to one side to keep them in sight.

‘One of Mark’s aunts.’ She was smothering a smile. ‘Won’t kill you but definitely an irritant.’

‘More of a spirit situation than a pint?’

Jess made a show of thinking, but ended with an assured, ‘Definitely.’

‘Shite.’ Kent looked back at Chandler, then Jess. Then Chandler again. ‘You couldn’t possibly…’

‘What? Be a distraction? At my own wedding?’ She kept her face straight until the very last moment, when she grinned and slung an arm around Kent’s shoulders. ‘Only for you, Emerson.’ She ruffled the back of his hair as they walked. ‘Anyway, I need to meet this man of yours properly. How better to get into his good books than rescue him from the clutches of an overkeen relative of my husband’s?’

If he was honest, Kent couldn’t think of a better way either. And, judging from the palpable relief on Chandler’s face as he spotted them approaching, he couldn’t have asked for better timing.

*

Miles was right.

Chandler was good at small talk, even with Mark’s aunt who had taken a keen liking to him. And Kent had been right, too: Chandler did like Mark, and for all his coarseness it seemed like it went both ways. Kent had nudged Chandler’s arm when she’d finally got fed up with them and accepted Mark’s advice of going for another drink and said that _see, it’s not just me that likes you_. Chandler blushed and refused to meet his gaze for a minute or two; Kent just squeezed his knee under the table and smiled at Maggie in the opposite direction. His face must have shown his surprise when Chandler had laid his hand on top of Kent’s, warmer than the summer evening, because she smirked and gave him a thumbs-up. He was sorely tempted to gesture something vulgar, but restrained himself as Jess’s mother wandered into his line of sight. He really didn’t fancy being on the end of one of her famous telling-offs.

‘Drink?’ Chandler asked as Kent slid his hand back into his own lap.

‘Give it a minute. Doris might not have finished perusing the menu yet.’

‘That isn’t a sentence I ever expected to hear.’

‘Welcome to your life, Joe,’ Kent said, grinning. ‘As I’m sure you’ve noticed, it can get rather weird when it wants.’ 

‘This…’ Chandler trailed off, and Kent watched as he chose his words. ‘This is nowhere near the worst.’ He wet his lips, glancing around the rest of the deserted table, then half his mouth jumped into the afterthought of a smile. ‘Not really that close to the normal level of odd we’re used to, either.’

‘If it’s getting boring for you, I’m sure Maggie and I could rustle something more interesting up. You’ve seen how we can get.’

‘I’m not bored.’ Chandler replied almost a little too quickly, then took a retrospective breath. ‘Far from it.’

Kent regarded him carefully from where he sat back in his chair, with the shadow of a smile. ‘I don’t know whether to be pleased or concerned.’

‘Pleased. Go with pleased.’ 

‘If you say so, sir.’

‘Really? Here?’ Chandler asked, and although he sounded as if he’d meant to seem exasperated it came across as honestly inquisitive.

Kent shrugged, a quick heft of shoulders. ‘Habit.’

(And he liked it, a little bit, the way if he used the right pitch a shiver slid down Chandler’s back. He hadn’t pinpointed exactly which tone was most effective yet, it seemed to vary with the circumstances, but Kent enjoyed finding out nonetheless.) 

‘Anyway,’ Chandler said, smothering an easier smile. ‘It’s already surpassed the time I ended up on Ed’s pub quiz team.’

Kent was just going to ask how on earth he’d ended up on a pub night with Ed when there was a familiar ‘Oi, you!’ from over his shoulder.

He sighed heavily, overdone, as Jess approached. ‘Here we go again.’

Chandler just looked amused. He’d been doing that all evening; Kent quite liked it, it was an expression that suited him, but he left him alone in favour of throwing a smile in Jess’s direction. He might complain about their hijinks but, on the whole, he had missed them. 

Not that she seemed to give a toss about that. Jess came to a stop and kept all her attention on Chandler instead. Kent may have rolled his eyes but no one noticed that either. (He was going to have to start being more vocal about his sarcasm.)

‘Would you mind terribly if I borrowed him?’ Jess asked, curling a hand around Kent’s shoulder. ‘He’s been promising me a dance for bloody years and he always manages to wriggle out of it.’

‘I am _on call_ a lot of the time, Jess.’

They both ignored him.

‘No, please, go ahead.’ Chandler had the sort of smile on that left Kent ever so slightly unnerved. ‘I’m sure I’d like to see it as much as you’d like to get on with it.’

‘Hear that, Emerson,’ Jess said, tugging at his shoulder until he gave in and got to his feet. ‘You’d be disappointing the both of us. Come on, you’ll like this one.’

Kent sighed; she was probably right. It was one of Alex Turner’s—granted, one of the slow ones he’d always skipped on the albums—but he it was the sort of thing he couldn’t feasibly say he wasn’t keen on. 

‘This is it,’ he said to neither one of them in particular, ‘this is the day my luck’s run out and my friends have turned on me.’

But it didn’t matter what he thought, did it, and he followed Jess’s grip on his wrist and wove through the crowd after her. He wanted to turn and shoot another glance at Chandler, try to find someone who might just commiserate with him, but that would be telling and Jess had already turned back to him, holding a hand out. He overdid another sigh and let himself be pulled towards her; Kent didn’t know where to put his hands. He was very wary of breaking something off the chiffon.

In the end, she arranged his hands on her waist herself, although the warning of ‘Careful of that one, it’s lethal,’ didn’t do much to inspire confidence. It glinted in the low light, undoubtably supposed to be endearing and a little twinkly, but it just reminded Kent of a switchblade.

‘Why did you choose a dress that’s a deathtrap?’ he asked as they fell into step.

‘Because it’s pretty.’

She said it as if he should have known from the start. ‘I won’t ask.’

‘Just avoid the seams and you’ll be fine.’

‘If you say so.’

‘You’re so complimentary.’ 

‘You put me up to it.’ 

Jess beamed in spite of his fallback sarcasm. 

‘So,’ she said after a moment with a smile, tone intrigued, ‘the Inspector and his bagman.’

‘Technically, I’m not his bagman.’ 

(That was Skip, and although they bickered like an old married couple Kent was sure Miles wasn’t _that_ dedicated to Chandler.)

‘Ah, good. So it’s totally above board.’ She fixed him with a look that said she knew it most definitely wasn’t.

‘It’s probably the one thing in my life that isn’t,’ Kent warned with half a laugh, ‘so if we could just keep it a little bit quiet, that’d be brilliant.’ 

‘He agreed to come, didn’t he?’

‘You didn’t give him much of a chance not to.’ He almost chuckled at how confused Jess looked at the statement; anyone else who knew Chandler would know exactly what he was on about. ‘He’s awfully polite. Wouldn’t have declined.’

Jess looked at him like she knew he was lying to himself. He probably was.

‘When did you decide you were just going to start communicating with overdone expressions?’

She just looked at him with something more extreme. 

‘You know,’ Kent continued, pointedly ignoring her glowering. ‘I would have thought you’d want to talk about something other than me and him at your wedding.’

‘Come off it. I’ve had my go, it’s your turn now.' 

‘This doesn’t bode well for me, does it?’

‘I dunno. Have you seen his face recently?’

Kent glanced over Jess’ shoulder and located the familiar face; he immediately saw what she meant. Chandler looked as if he was considering drowning himself in the champagne. And not in an especially good way.

‘You should ask him to dance.’

Kent’s gaze snapped back to her conspiratorial grin. ‘I shouldn’t.’

She fixed him with an arched look; Kent ignored it. He knew it didn’t make much sense as an answer, but it was true.

‘Why not?’

‘Plenty of reasons, Jess, most of which I’m sure have occurred to you.’

‘Don’t be an idiot, of course they have. But none of them are particularly problematic.’

‘I wouldn’t be so sure about that.'

She glanced past him again, frowning a little this time. ‘He didn’t really mind, did he?’

‘What? No,’ Kent answered, so quickly if he was anyone else he might have suspected something. He took a breath and continued. ‘No, he’s not like that.’

‘What’s he like, then?’ Jess asked as they narrowly avoided careening into Mark and his mum. Jess took the chance to prod Mark in the back anyway, just because she could try and blame Kent for it. Mark looked at them both like they were insane as they drifted away, giggling. Jess even topped it off with a little wave, which coaxed a smile from Mrs Hadley, anyway. That was a good sign. 

(They were all still children, really.)

‘He’s like me,’ Kent said once they’d fallen silent again. ‘He thinks too much.’

‘Oh god. Don’t tell me you sit next to each other and _think_ in every other spare moment.’ 

‘Only when the going gets tough. We’ve more than enough to amuse ourselves with otherwise.’ 

She chuckled and raised the hand resting on his shoulder to ruffle at his hair. ‘Coy, aren’t we?’

‘I know you left your privacy behind a long time ago,’ he warned, ducking as much as he could without knocking anyone else, ‘but you haven’t seen my arse unannounced so I think I’ll keep it to myself, thanks.’

‘Honestly, that was _one_ time,’ Jess said with a laugh, though it was gentled with a sort of wistful thought as she spoke again. ‘Do you know what he thinks about?’

‘Everything, probably. We’re knee deep in shit most of the time.’

‘And you?’

‘I’m sure you have your suspicions, and that they’re probably right.’ 

‘Have you even _thought_ about asking him to dance?’

‘Not back to that again.’

(He didn’t say that he had. He didn’t say that he had quite often in the lead up to his, that he’d considered the possible complications, the unlikely repercussions, and decided he’d quite like it. But he wouldn’t push, because it had to come from Chandler. Kent had sworn to himself that first night, when they’d settled in his bed together for sleep for the first time and Kent had listened to Chandler fall asleep with one hand carding through his hair, that he wouldn’t push him into anything he didn’t absolutely want. He had been happy then, the happiest he’d been in years. Then it had got even better, and Chandler had wanted him, turned to him and given him the parts he didn’t let anyone else get close to, and Kent had only wanted what Chandler would give. Because he had everything he could ask for anyway.)

‘No one here _knows_ you,’ she continued, the unsolicited convincing arriving although he’d never asked for it. ‘I mean, we do, but who else is here? Unless one of you smuggled more staff from the Met down to Somerset in a suitcase, it’s not going to get back to your boss. Whoever that is, besides him.’

Kent laughed, although the thought itself scared him. ‘Funnily enough, he’s close to the Commander.’

‘Shite.’ Jess chuckled, and it made Kent feel as if he wasn’t quite as mental as he’d originally thought. ‘That’s awkward.’ 

‘Yeah, it’s all a bit of a cock-up really, but it works.’

He settled into a comfortable smile, one that probably said too much, but of course she wouldn’t let that hang around for long.

‘Except he won’t ask you to dance at my wedding.’

‘You could ask him, if you’re so bothered about getting him out of his chair.’

‘Bollocks.’ She raised one hand to poke a finger to Kent’s chest. ‘I want to see him dance with _you_.’

He rolled his eyes. ‘It’s like a fixation with you, isn’t it?’

‘You really haven’t noticed his face, have you?’

Kent fixed her with a look for a moment, but as she nodded encouragingly over his shoulder he sighed and turned. Someone’s tipsy uncle careened past them at the very same moment, only barely managing to miss Kent’s elbow, but he recovered into the rhythm and sought out the table where Jess snatched him from. Without even trying he found Chandler’s eyes, or maybe Chandler found his, but suddenly they were looking at one another from opposite ends of a crowd. Kent smiled, but a part of it felt sad. It shouldn’t. 

‘Maybe one day,’ he said, words more of a sigh than a statement, as he turned away. 

Jess shot him another look. The silence somehow said more about her abstract disapproval than any phrase could, but Kent still wasn’t sure whether it was directed at Chandler or him or the both of them.

‘It isn’t that easy, Jess.’

She looked as if he wanted to say something about that, probably something along the lines of _Yes, it is_ or _It doesn’t have to be like this_ but she held the words back. Instead she patted his shoulder where she’d rested her hand and sighed in time with the music.

‘I know, Em,’ she said eventually, rubbing at the seam of his suit with her thumb. ‘I wish it was.’ She exhaled again, lowering her voice as another couple brushed that bit too close. ‘For you and for him.’ 

Kent didn’t know if he agreed with her, but he nodded anyway.

They moved for a moment longer in silence, heads full of lyrics. ‘I bet no one would even notice.’ 

‘ _Jess_.’

‘Sorry. You can’t blame a girl for trying.’

He muttered, ‘I can try,’ and smothered a smile at her answering laugh.

Kent was so pleased that they’d managed to get back to that comfortable point of humour that he didn’t immediately notice the way she’d focused on something past his shoulder, eyes half disbelieving. He might have registered it a bit but just put it down to the fact that Mark was somewhere behind him. He wouldn’t have been especially surprised if he’d tried to use the opportunity to attach a serviette with ‘ _kick me_ ’ or something equally inane scrawled on it to his back. They had a soft spot for that sort of humour.

‘Sorry, would you mind?’

Kent recognized the voice (of course he did) and, more worryingly, he recognized the way Jess grinned. Thrilled was an understatement. 

This could either go very, very badly or tremendously well—and he couldn’t tell which way was more likely.

‘Of course not,’ Jess said, glee crowding out anything else in her voice. She virtually pushed Kent in Chandler’s direction. ‘Be my guest. He’s done nothing but talk about you, you know.’ 

‘Lay off it.’ 

He’d tried to sound disparaging, but he’d been too distracted with the urge to watch Chandler’s careful face and Jess just smothered a laugh as she slid her hand away from his shoulder with a gentle squeeze—whatever that meant—and weaved through the crowd. For a moment Kent felt terribly alone, as if the murmur of people wasn’t there, and he whisked a tentative glance towards Chandler. For what? Answers, explanations? None of those, not really. Just him, really, and when his mouth quirked into a little bit of a smile it all rushed back, the unfamiliar voices at his shoulder and the overwhelming feeling of being looked at.

Kent’s pulse kicked hard as Chandler slipped a hand along his side. 

‘Joe?’ 

Chandler shushed him, a short noise that he’d used a thousand times in the incident room to make them all shut up and sit up and listen morphed into something soft and affectionate. This time it just served to make Kent’s mind go silent, blank, and he let Chandler manoeuvre him into the right sway. Nothing elaborate—Kent didn’t think he could trust his legs to even attempt elaborate—but gentle and close, soft, trusting his judgement as much as his grip and movement. Kent fell into it, into him, with just a slight thought to what this might mean, and settled closer to an aroma of Tiger Balm, the hint of clove, menthol; it should have worried him, should have made him wonder whether or not they (he? They? It was difficult to tell, sometimes) were teetering along the edge. But it didn’t, it just felt familiar and comforting and so essentially Chandler that Kent leaned in despite himself, tightened his grip on Chandler’s shoulder, something tight enough to say… well, something at the very least. More than he was saying with his mouth. In fact, he probably should have been saying something, hadn’t he?

He chanced another quick glance at Chandler’s eyes, the way he was surveying the crowd (Jess had been right, no one could possibly care less about their presence, they had their own concerns) and Kent bit at his lip as Chandler flexed his fingers against Kent’s side. Unconscious or not, it made Kent want to fold in even closer; he forced his body to obey his orders not to. It only really half obeyed.

The beat slipped from one tempo to the next with the fadeout, not entirely dissimilar at the base but superficially so. Kent recognized it—recognized them both, in fact.

‘It sounds like they’re playing the album,’ he said, leaning close to Chandler’s shoulder to make sure he was heard over the opening line. 

Chandler laughed, gentle in his chest, and turned his head to speak in Kent’s ear. ‘Why not? It’s decent.’

Kent pulled back to look at him, face slack. One corner of his mouth may have twitched upwards into a sort of smile, maybe, but he was far too distracted by the lingering sensation of Chandler’s lips near his ear.

The DI pulled him a little closer. ‘Yes, I notice.’

It took a moment for Kent to relax into the sway again after that, as he shot Chandler a couple of his shy grins.

‘Have you, then?’

Chandler’s question took him by surprise; he’d been paying more attention to how they moved together, how easy it was. ‘What?’

‘Been talking about me,’ he clarified with a gentle nod in the direction Jess had taken to leave them be.

Kent allowed himself a wry smile. ‘In a manner of speaking.’

Chandler looked at him, expression similar to the one he wore when he was trying to decide if the skipper was being intentionally obtuse. It made everything sardonic about his smile fall away to something soft, gentle. Borderline sentimental. They shouldn’t have let him be a copper. Maybe they won’t in the future, because he was dancing with his boss, for God’s sake, and he didn’t want to stop.

He cleared his throat; it was the only thing he could think to do. ‘I didn’t know you danced.’

‘I didn’t either.’ Chandler did almost seem surprised. ‘I rarely wish to.’

‘Should I be flattered?’

‘I don’t know yet.’ It was the first time anything akin to nerves appeared on Chandler’s face. ‘I have to admit, I don’t have experience dancing to this sort of thing.’

‘Neither have I. Not like this, anyway.’ There weren’t many songs on this album with the right sort of beat, really, but Kent quite liked this one. Probably wouldn’t skip it so much anymore, if this is what came to mind when the opening chords reached him. ‘We seem to be doing all right, though.’

Chandler nodded, as if considering. ‘Not trodden on anybody yet.’

‘Not slipped in a cowpat.’

‘That’s a plus.’

Kent grinned. He couldn’t conceive of anything better to do, not really, not with Chandler smiling like that.

‘What’s brought this on, then?’ 

Chandler opened his mouth as if to speak, then closed it. Kent took the risk—though they were standing in a pretty big one already, seeing as they were dancing in the middle of a crowd at his flatmate’s wedding and he still couldn’t believe it and that was about as massive a risk as any—to press a light touch to the back of his neck.

‘Not that I mind.’

‘Oh, good.’

Chandler actually looked a bit relieved. Kent didn’t move his hand. 

He crooked his head to one side with a gentle frown. ‘You thought I might?' 

‘Even I’ll admit it’s not the best conclusion, faced with the evidence,’ Chandler said, averting his eyes as best he could, ‘but yes, it had crossed my mind.’

‘Miles is right,’ Kent said with a soft smile, stroking at the skin under his fingers. ‘You are a pillock.’

‘What?’ Chandler asked, almost out of reflex, then he shook his head and sighed. ‘Forget I asked. I doubt I had to do anything specific to elicit such praise from Miles.’

Kent laughed, because it was painfully true, and snuck his fingers along Chandler’s lapel.

‘Of course I don’t mind,’ he continued, answering although they’d already passed over the question. ‘I wouldn’t have let you otherwise. I was more worried about you. I wouldn’t have…’ Words didn’t seem specific enough to explain. ‘Well, I’d already come to the conclusion that we wouldn’t be doing this.’

‘So had I.’

Kent chuckled. ‘Something has apparently gone very wrong.’

‘No, not really. I just… well, you, and um. Well.’

Chandler lost for words was an interesting sight; Kent had seen it before, he’d caused it before, but there was alway something intriguing about it. For an eloquent man like him, for one who catches every poetic and literary allusion in crime and brought in a historian to keep in their basement for the mere sake of it, it was the look on his face that elaborated his meaning. Kent didn’t search, he just looked, and Chandler gave; he battled with syllables but Kent caught his eye and he chose some anyway.

‘I wanted to. It took me by surprise, I think, but… well, I thought about it and all the things that had put me off the idea didn’t seem…’ He trailed off again, looking for the same word and curling his fingers ever so slightly tighter into Kent’s side. As if perhaps that might remind him. ‘It didn’t seem quite as problematic.’ 

‘I have to admit, I didn’t think…’ Kent trailed off, grinned at where he’d stopped for a moment. It was true, sometimes he didn’t think, but he’d thought almost too much about this. ‘Well, you know. This is public.’

Kent would have expected Chandler to say something along along the lines of _Don’t remind me_ or pull a face amounting to much the same thing, but instead his mouth twitched into a smile.

‘That’s all right.’

‘It’s not London, that’s what you mean.’

Chandler tipped his head from side to side, considering. ‘Yes and no.’

Kent let him think, if that was even what he was doing, and absentmindedly rubbed circles against the line of Chandler’s shoulder with his thumb. He didn’t mean for it to correspond with the beat of the song, not really, but he didn’t stop it when he noticed. The slight smile playing on Chandler’s mouth suggested that he had noticed, but he didn’t say.

Instead he waited until he could catch Kent’s eye and, with a whisper just loud enough to hear, said, ‘I thought I’d take the risk.’

Chandler ran a hand along his arm, curled his fingers around his shoulder so that Kent’s shoulder blade sat beneath his palm. Kent tried to ignore his sharper intake of breath, the way he reflexively tightened his grip on Chandler’s skin, and gave in to the urge to shift even closer as Chandler rested his cheek against his temple.

Kent couldn’t really tell if it was a flush of embarrassment or the heat of hyperawareness, but he let Chandler’s warmth wash over him like a hot wave, throbbing in his bones. He tucked his head a little further into Chandler’s neck, just for a moment, and brushed a brief kiss to his skin. When he pulled back he found Chandler looking at him with an odd expression, soft but distant. 

He swallowed, and said, ‘I couldn’t not.’ 

(He couldn’t help it. It sounded like an excuse.) 

Something imperceptible shifted, and maybe it was the sigh that did it. Chandler murmured, ‘I know the feeling.’ 

With that Kent smiled, private and just for him, and let Chandler brush a kiss to his forehead. 

They settled into a comfortable silence filled with the chords and words that they both apparently knew, and slotted into the gentle sea of movement with more ease than Kent would have thought possible. His scars ached, as they sometimes did after an exceptionally long day, but only distantly. The warmth of Chandler’s hand against his side, the gentle breaths against his head and their closeness in the crowd was more pressing, more immediate.

More important.


	4. Chapter 4

They slipped away when no one would notice. Not that anyone would, really, but they’d become accustomed to a certain series of events and waiting until the room was thinning felt threatening in itself. Kent tugged at Chandler’s hand when Jess and Maggie were doing an enthusiastic (albeit amateur) quickstep and Mark twirled his new mother-in-law around the gardens; there were a couple of close collisions softened by laughter that became more and more muffled as they made their way across the lawns. Kent had dropped Chandler’s hand as soon as he’d got the message and followed his lead, but as soon as they made it far enough away and the only light was the odd trail of fairy lights at their feet he felt the man’s fingers touch at the back of his hand, weave in between his own.

‘Are you sure?’ Chandler asked as they slowed, the bright light of the main path dissuading them from proceeding too much further just yet. ‘They didn’t seem finished.’

Kent squeezed his hand, grinning. ‘Knowing them, they won’t be finished until its gone light. I’ll see them in the morning. Probably have to carry a few of them back into the lifts if it’s anything like the carnage we used to end up with.’ 

Chandler’s mouth twitched. ‘None of you are students anymore.’

‘Not all of us were,’ Kent said, raising one brow, ‘and trust me, they wouldn’t take kindly to the suggestion that they can’t still keep up with the kids.’

‘You?’

‘Me?’ Kent paused and held Chandler’s gaze. ‘I’d much rather dash off now and remember the rest of my evening.’

‘Would you?’

‘Not everything I do is for your benefit, you know,’ he said, disentangling their hands in order to cradle the back of Chandler’s neck, feel the muscles shifting. It made something in his chest lurch as he felt Chandler swallow. ‘I can really be quite selfish when I want to.’ 

Chandler looked at him for a moment, tightened his mouth with a nod. Although he was trying to keep his expression neutral, Kent could see him thinking, trying to catalogue all the times Kent had been selfish, had taken what he wanted and got on with things. It wasn’t often, not really, but they tended to be memorable occasions. Kent stroked a thumb against Chandler’s cheek and grinned. He quite liked _knowing_.

There was a shift of something in the vegetation, or at least that was what Kent thought it was. He didn’t have much of a chance to muse on it because Chandler had taken a sudden breath and pressed their mouths together. He walked him them both back, slightly away from the well-trodden trail, pushing although his touch was gentle; Kent grinned against him, wrapped an arm around his neck and slipped into the shadows. Sometimes, he supposed, they could be their friends. Chandler’s hands caught at the small of his back, holding them both away from the bark of nearby trees, and Kent altered the angle of his neck to encourage the touch of tongue. In that moment—or however many there were, neither of them were in much of a state to notice—Kent wasn’t sure if he cared if anyone happened across them. It was the country air and the beer talking, obviously, but that didn’t stop him from pulling Chandler closer, weaving a hand through the back of his hair, teasing the back of his collar.

Kent looked up at Chandler when they paused and pulled apart, his usually clear face dappled with the shadow cast by the looming tree, lips wet. ‘So can you, sometimes.’

Chandler laughed, properly _laughed_ , and Kent didn’t think he’d been that happy in years.

*

They didn’t even bother with the electronic key that Kent had tucked in his jacket pocket when they’d arrived.

Kent's hand grabbed Chandler’s jacket, using it to guide himself through the dark until they found the infuriatingly difficult card slot that would activate the lights. The bulbs were those useless energy saving ones, the yellow cast unflattering but apparently very popular with hotels for some unknown reason. Chandler pulled a face as they warmed up to full capacity and Kent clucked his tongue in solidarity, letting his hand slip from Chandler’s side. 

They may have left earlier than most of the guests Kent knew personally but it was already the next morning, and there was that little sway again that betrayed how tired Chandler actually was. It’d been a full day, just as stressful as a double shift but in a different way, and they’d been up early. Kent took the lead, covering a conspicuous yawn with one hand and excusing himself. He felt Chandler’s gaze on his neck but didn’t turn back.

Kent went about his routine much as he always had; he wasn’t fond of hotels, not really, but he didn’t actively dislike them. Like most people, he’d rather be home, but after a day like theirs he’d take any clean bed that was going. He swapped his suit for a top he’d long ago relegated to sleeping, the material catching on damp skin a bit where he’d been too impatient to dry off properly, and the second pair of plaid pajama trousers that he’d bought to replace the ones he’d trodden a hole in before Chandler had moved in.

The man in question caught his arm as they passed in the doorway to the bathroom. Kent smiled at him in the quiet, took note of the fact he was now without jacket and tie. He looked unfinished, and in a way he was. Kent knew he’d feel that way.

‘What?’ Kent prompted, resting his knuckles against the buttons high on Chandler’s stomach.

‘Um, never mind.’ Chandler looked away then back to him. Kent raised his eyebrows. ‘Nothing.’ 

Kent let him go; he’d find out eventually, if it mattered. Chandler would find a way to phrase it, whatever it was. So instead of worrying about it Kent turned down the bed, picked out which of the slightly questionable pillows would suit them the best, and climbed under the duvet. Hotel beds were always too crisp for him—he’d had a lifetime of slightly ruffled sheets and restless sleep. Somehow Kent reckoned their regularity and uniformity were their only saving grace as far as Chandler was concerned.

(He only disrupted his own side, as much as he could manage. He’d do the same to Chandler’s, too, but only if he was asked. If he opened himself to it.)

The gentle noises that reminded Kent that Chandler was there echoed through the small room; he recognised each one, now, like the sound of Chandler’s voice. Kent smiled to himself and listened. There wasn’t much else to do, after all, and Kent would use any excuse that ran his way. He would have had a poke around on his phone, but the thing was on its last legs and there was no plug for the charger anywhere near where he was lying. So instead he leant over, swearing when he overbalanced slightly and the shower switched back on, and fished the battered book he’d chucked in his bag at the last minute. The blurb had seemed promising, but it had just turned out to be something involving time travel and requiring more attention than he was willing to give it. It wasn’t surprising he drifted off and the next thing he knew was Chandler teasing the paperback from his hands and neatly folding the corner of the page. He let him take it, still a little sleep-sodden, and curled against his side—skin still water warm and smelling of home, woodsmoke—as he mattress dipped under his weight.

Kent turned to him for a kiss, not pressing. Chandler tipped Kent’s chin up for a single, open-mouthed kiss—the flicker of tongue against tongue, just feeling, for a moment, before Kent rolled away from him and settled on his back, skull against the pillow. Chandler laid beside him and stretched one arm to switch off the last lamp, casting them both in the blue blackness. Faint moonlight crept around the edge of the curtains—inadequate, even compared to Kent’s useless ones that he never got around to replacing—and Chandler turned away from it, nudging towards Kent. He could tell he was measuring his breathing, careful, and Kent couldn’t let him do that on his own. He kissed Chandler again, his tongue flicking over Chandler’s lower lip.  Chandler moaned softly, and let himself sink into the kiss. Somewhere in between fumbling his way on top of him and planting both hands either side of Chandler’s head, knees either side of Chandler’s hips, Kent dipped further into the warmth of his skin, his mouth. All of him.

‘Please let me,’ he said against Chandler’s lips. ‘Anything, anything you want.’

What he meant is please let me help, let me distract you, let me take you somewhere else for a moment. He’d do anything he wanted; anything and everything, anything and nothing. Whatever would make him happy, would make him believe how much he was wanted—how much he was loved. Kent hadn’t managed to bring himself to say it yet, but he knew. He loved him, he had for years, except it was fuller now, more. He thought it harder than ever as Chandler ran a hand through his hair, fantasized about his heart beating out the letters in Morse code against Chandler’s ribcage.

He’d probably understand it, after all. 

‘Em, you know I…’ Chandler trailed off.

Kent shifted and the sheets crackled; Chandler winced. 

‘Sorry—’

Kent startled; Chandler gentled the back of his neck.

‘You’re fine, Em, it’s fine.‘

‘No, it’s not.’ Kent looked at him through the darkness, knowing.

‘Yes, it is,’ Chandler said, emphatic as he drew Kent back against him despite the rustling sheets. He looped a hand around the back of his head and pulled him in for a soft kiss, pressing until Kent relaxed. ‘Stay,’ he said as they parted, pressing his mouth to the side of Kent’s neck. ‘God, please, stay.’

‘I’m not—what—sorry?’ Kent lifted his head but not the rest of him; Chandler kept his fingers loosely curled around one of his shoulders. Kent had wrapped one hand in Chandler’s shirt and he wasn’t about to let go, not even when words failed him. ‘What—why wouldn’t I?’

‘Doubt,’ Chandler began, words quieter than normal, ‘has always been my downfall.' 

Kent almost didn’t want to ask, but he had to. ‘Me?’

‘No, not you.’ Chandler thumbed the skin under Kent’s eye, smiling weakly, his expression soft but pained. ‘Never you.’

There was a thump on the outside wall in the momentary silence, a crescendo of laughter that died away after an overdone shushing; Chandler sighed and tightened the arm he’d wrapped around Kent’s waist. They lay in the darkness, warm and still, as Kent laid his cheek against Chandler’s sternum. Another group made their way down the hall, not quite as raucous as the last.

Chandler stretched his neck to press a kiss to the top of Kent’s head, breathing out, ‘Just myself,’ into his hair.

There were a hundred things Kent would have liked to say to that, a hundred examples he could give to counter most of Chandler’s disappointments in himself, but he didn’t say them. He knew Chandler’s voice and that wasn’t one that said he was finished. That, strangely enough, wasn’t the problem. Not the main one, anyway. Kent would have put money on it. But instead he pressed a kiss to the column of Chandler’s throat, tightened the grip of his hand, and hoped that Chandler could feel the way his heart was pounding. 

Chandler fought his way through a sigh. ‘I haven’t said a word of what I wanted to say.’

‘You’ve said enough,’ Kent countered. ‘I understand.’ 

‘No, I haven’t.’ He touched at Kent’s neck, the slope towards his shoulder. ‘You should know. You deserve to hear it from me.’

‘Joe.’

(Kent thought he realised what was coming. He really, really didn’t want to be wrong.) 

‘I do, you know.’ Chandler tried to shrug but the lumpy pillow got in the way. ‘Love you.’ 

For a split second, Kent felt as if his heart might just leap out of his mouth. Perhaps that was why he couldn’t bring himself to speak, to say anything—even as Chandler looked up at him, hair mussed out of place and it was that, _that_ of all things, that really made him seem vulnerable.

He was highly amused by the pink stain that crept up Chandler’s face; he couldn’t even see it, not really, but he’d seen it before and he knew its routes. He might have been able to kid himself that he could feel the warmth under Chandler’s skin, the embarrassment; he touched at it with gentle fingers, brushed across his cheeks, his neck, the spread of his shoulders. Aimless and methodical all at once. Chandler watched him do it, breath bated, eyes following his fingers as far as they could then flickering back to Kent’s face, the set of his mouth.

Kent couldn’t quite resist brushing a kiss to Chandler’s lips as his fingers slipped away, shifting his weight slightly so that the press was more emphatic. Chandler turned into him, mouth and body and limbs, let Kent rest his weight against his chest. There was something forlorn in the way he stroked the back of Kent’s neck, exhaled through his nose and tightened the arm wrapped around Kent’s side; he chased, momentarily, as Kent pulled back, but caught himself. Kent almost wished he wouldn’t.

Chandler wet his lips thoughtfully, let a tooth catch on a corner. ‘You don’t have to—’

‘Oh, god, yes, me too.’ Kent stumbled over his thoughts, chin resting against Chandler’s sternum until he pushed himself up on one elbow. He gazed down at Chandler through the dark like he’d done a hundred times before and tried to gather the words. ‘Sorry. It’s just I’ve said it in my head so often I forgot I never said it out loud.’ 

Chandler smiled, mumbled something that may have been ‘You and me both,’ and ran both hands up Kent’s back to pull him close. 

‘Sorry,’ Kent said again, words muffled against Chandler’s skin. ‘I’m a bit shit at this.’

‘Would you mind if I disagreed?’

‘No.’ He smiled and picked up his head to rest his chin on Chandler’s.  ‘I love you,’ he said, and after a moment’s contemplation, added, ‘I’m not the only one of us who deserves to hear it.’

Kent studied Chandler’s expression carefully, watched a muscle twitch in his jaw and the way he blinked heavily, slowly. Kent had never wanted to force him to self-abandonment. But from the look in Chandler’s eyes, the way he slid his gaze away only to search him out again a moment later, hand grasping for Kent’s, he realised he hadn’t. He hadn’t taken anything, pushed anything. Chandler had given him everything he’d wanted not because he asked but because he knew and because he wanted to. It was cliché and overdone and so bloody sickly but Kent felt that his heart might just burst.

It must have shown on his face, because Chandler let go of his hand and touched at his cheek instead, glancing and careful. ‘Hey.’

‘I’m fine.’ 

From the way his voice wavered, even Kent wasn’t sure. But he was, he _was_ , and he said as much as he buried his face in the warm crook of Chandler’s neck. He couldn’t stay there forever, he wouldn’t, but from the way Chandler curled an arm around his lower back suggested that he wouldn’t mind if he tried to.

‘I believe I’ve said this before,’ Kent began, pausing to study the bow of Chandler’s top lip and let the next group of rowdy passerby clear the hallway, ‘but you’re wonderful.’ 

‘You’ll remember my reservations.’ Chandler sighed so deeply Kent felt as if his inhale somehow seeped between his ribs. ‘They’re still valid.’

Kent smiled and smothered a yawn against Chandler’s shoulder. ‘I can think what I want to, can’t I?’

The gentle laugh almost surprised him, though the kiss didn’t. Chandler had a habit of doing that, nudging their mouths together after some small compliment, and Kent couldn’t possibly complain. He supposed it was like pinching himself, or snapping the band on his wrist, a talisman or marker that he hadn’t imagined the last few seconds. Kent grinned against him, nipped at the fullness of his bottom lip; Chandler responded with a surprised sound and a swipe of his tongue.

Yes, definitely real. You can’t fake a heartbeat.

Kent pulled away and rested his mouth against Chandler’s cheek for a long moment, a version of a kiss. They didn’t need much much else, much more, not in that moment. Chandler ran a hand through Kent’s curls, fingers stroking across his neck, the well-worn fabric across his shoulders and the dip of his back. Before he could stop himself, Kent made a sound that was an odd mixture of a sigh and a purr, more than pleased.

Chandler flexed his arm, gathered Kent close to his side. Somewhere in the vague depths it occurred to Kent that he was going to make Chandler’s limb go numb, it couldn’t be good for his blood flow, but there was a determination in his grip that said Kent shouldn’t mention it. He’d know, anyway; he always did. He’d chosen it, then, the discomfort that came with sharing space, trying to slot themselves together in a manner which allowed for sleep. Chandler’s fingers traced patterns at the base of Kent’s ribcage, lazy and careful, definite. He was definitely there. Kent smiled with his eyes shut, sighed, and decided that Chandler’s shoulder was certainly a suitable pillow.

Time slid messily sideways, and they slept. 

*

It was probably just the way they’d built it up all in their heads, but Chandler insisted on going into the station early the following Monday. As far as Kent was concerned it was far too early—everything was too early when sunrise insisted on being _that_ bloody bright at half past five—but he unhooked his arm from Chandler’s waist and complained to the pillow as he listened to the shower. He was glad it was his, this time. One night was more than enough—but it had been nice. Very nice. He smiled into the sheets and eventually convinced himself to reach for his phone. He couldn’t quite manage to climb out of bed yet, but he could roll over and steal back some of the duvet. He might even be able to gather up the strength to push himself up on his elbows when Chandler walked back in, shrugging his suit jacket over his shoulders.

(Or, on second thought: maybe not.) 

Chandler pressed a kiss to the edge of his mouth before he went.

Kent held the back of his neck for a moment. ‘I can’t tell if you’re late for yesterday’s shift, or incredibly early for today’s.’

‘There wasn’t a shift yesterday.’

‘You know what I mean.’

Chandler leant forward for another press of lips, smiling against him. ‘Try not to be late.’

Kent had scoffed and let him go, finally pushing himself out of bed with another scornful look at the sun, and taken as long as possible before finding himself in the kitchen grabbing at the keys to his Vespa. Even with the leisurely pace he got to the station in good time. He passed Miles in reception and only got an annoyingly smug glance in response to his genial ‘Morning, skip.’ It was a good job he’d decided on wasting ten minutes on getting a hot drink from the coffee shop on the corner otherwise he would have been more annoyed about that than he was. 

Actually, he wasn’t annoyed at all. He might have even smiled, and perhaps that was why Miles looked like he’d just won a bet.

(He probably had.)

Chandler wasn’t in his office or the rest of the incident room when Kent wandered in (and he definitely wasn’t looking, nope, definitely not) though the coat on the back of Mansell’s chair said he was somewhere in the vicinity. The quiet said he wasn’t too close. There was nothing on Riley’s desk that said she was in, and the fact that the correct day’s paper had been flung on Miles’s suggested that he’d been in for ages and had just decided on squirreling himself away with a cup of tea and the sports pages. Kent parked himself at his desk, eyeing the phone; he supposed one of them should be there in case it went. He always had a bad case of wishful thinking.

Mansell came and went, flitting in and out with a smutty smile and an expression that said he wasn’t even going to bother asking, he was sticking with what he’d decided they’d done. Kent rolled his eyes at him but grinned; he assumed he hadn’t been giving Chandler the same treatment. There was a certain line—as he so liked saying—and Chandler generally was well beyond it. Even for him. Miles, on the other hand—well, Miles’ face didn’t look any less smug when he reappeared.

‘How much?’ Kent asked when the skipper approached his desk.

The crooked grin said it all. ‘Twenty quid.’

‘Who from?’

‘Mansell. Who else?’ Miles rerouted to his own desk, burrowing under the papers until he found his mobile. ‘He’s the only one foolish enough.’

There was probably a compliment there, or a vote of confidence, but Kent didn’t want to look at it too closely. Something about gift horses and mouths. He didn’t have much of a chance, anyway, since the skipper plucked a file from the top of his desk and dropped it on the edge of Kent’s before going for another.

‘Make up for the time off, hmm?’ Miles jabbed the file in Kent’s direction until he took it, frowning at its depth. Miles glanced around the room as Kent flicked through the pages, scowling; it was sorely lacking in any sort of organization. ‘You haven’t seen Buchan yet, have you?’ 

‘No—should I have?’

Miles grumbled something incomprehensible that Kent assumed was a no and turned towards the stairs. Kent watched him go, wondering vaguely what business those two could have together, but ended up shrugging to the empty room. None of the paperwork sympathized.

So all was the same, really.

Riley walked in a few minutes later—whether it was five or ten or fifteen, Kent couldn’t tell. Just one look at the amount of emails that had lodged themselves in his inbox over the weekend had made time slow to a grinding halt. He’d been putting off looking at it, he knew (Why break the spell? It had been nice, a day off. He hadn’t skived off in years. Not that they’d really skived off. But they had, a bit. Just a little bit) but he hadn’t expected it to pile up quite so much. Maybe the Commander had seen to it. Kent wouldn’t have put it past him. He’d always thought him just a little bit suspect… in a benevolent sort of way. If that made any sense.

‘Hello, stranger,’ she said as she dropped her bag on her seat. ‘Good morning?’

Kent looked up from his computer and nodded, adding, ‘I’ve not been gone that long.’

‘You weren’t left here with Mansell.’ Riley shook her head in the direction of Mansell’s desk. ‘It felt like centuries. Relentless, he is.’

‘You had the afternoon off.’

‘Let’s just say that in comparison, getting the kids home from school was positively serene.’

Kent huffed out a laugh and returned to the last of the emails. ‘My heart bleeds.’

Riley chuckled. ‘How’d it go, then?’

She was trying to sound like an attentive acquaintance, or someone with only a vague interest attempting to go through pleasantries. She wasn’t doing a very convincing job of it.

Kent swallowed just a little too heavily. ‘Yeah. Good. Very well.’

‘That’s all you’re going to give me?’

He hadn’t quite decided how much he was going to give them quite yet, thank you very much, and he tried to tell Riley as much with a pointed look. Knowing Riley she’d want all the sordid details—not, he reminded himself, that there were any—just so she could bring it up at an inopportune moment. Actually, they would all want that. They _loved_ that. Kent didn’t think they’d ever tire of watching Chandler go pale and red so quickly he ended up blotchy. 

‘Oh,’ he said, feigning a sudden thought, ‘and they said thanks for the card.’

Riley shot him an unamused look and didn’t shift from where she’d perched on the corner of his desk. Kent was just deciding on exactly which sharp words he was going to employ in this situation when there was a sound from the door and they both turned to look in its direction. Chandler didn’t even notice they were looking at him until he was halfway through the room, and even then he didn’t seem to gauge the expression on Riley’s face. He just nodded at them both, a silent good morning, and proceeded to wherever it was he was going.

He’d barely made an exit from the room before she turned on Kent again. ‘So?’

‘What?’

‘You’re going to tell me more.’ 

‘Oh, am I?’ Kent quirked a brow at the paperwork he was trying to look like he was doing.

‘There’s nothing on. I have all day and nothing to do except pester you.’ She glanced around the room, as if she expected it to announce if they had any work to do. ‘And, you forget,’ she continued when she came back to facing him, ‘I can hold Mansell off.’ 

Kent was relatively sure that wasn’t true, and if it was he could find something for her to do instead, there were hundreds of files in the station and at least one or two of them had to still be pertinent. But he got the point. 

‘Fine.’ He punctuated his words with a particularly emphatic shove of a file. ‘We had a lovely time and a few drinks and a little dance.’

‘My arse!’ Riley positively cackled as she said it, although when she noticed his expression she adopted a (barely) straight face and said, ‘Of course. Of course you did.’

‘You asked.’ Kent shrugged, trying not to smile. ‘Is that enough for you?’

‘I’ve half a mind to ask again, just to see what else you can come up with!’

He did grin then; there was no reason not to. ‘Why don’t you give it a go and pitch some of your ideas to me? I’ll tell you when you get warm.’ 

‘If we don’t get anything in soon I think I might.’ She overdid a sigh, glancing around the otherwise empty room. ‘God, I never thought I’d see the day when I’d be glad to be handed a smash and grab.’

‘Knowing this place,’ Kent said, half darkly, ‘it’d probably end up being some sort of weird medieval thing.’ 

He was glad Ed wasn’t there. He’d probably be on the receiving end of a ten-minute long spiel about how ‘ _weird medieval thing_ ’ was an entirely inadequate description for the intricate references they came up against every other week. It was probably anathema to even think it.

‘So, nothing to sniff at, then,’ Riley said, affectionately wrinkling her nose. ‘You love it.’

Chandler chose that moment to reappear, arriving in the incident room from one of the side corridors, slinking along the side of the room until he reached his office. She was right, it was a quiet day, and they were all getting on with the slow work they inevitably put off when the cases come along, but Kent didn’t really try and hide the fact that he followed the line of Chandler’s back, the way he leant to one side to fish a tub of Tiger Balm from a desk draw. Riley grinned at him, too pleased to be decent, and Kent felt a flush rise on the back of his neck. Him and his bloody telltale signs.

‘Yeah,’ he said, letting her ruffle the side of his hair. ‘I do.’ 

*

No medieval smash and grab arrived. They cleared up a couple of minor incidents, most of which turned out to be better suited to other units rather than them, but it was better than sitting around doing nothing. Or, even worse, sitting through one of Ed’s powerpoints. Though, Kent supposed as he shut the door to the flat behind him, a powerpoint on medieval smash and grabs might actually be interesting.

The thought didn’t last long. Kent couldn’t pretend that seeing Jess’s handwriting on another envelope that got pushed through their front door didn’t stun him. Now that they were on the other side of the wedding, there was no reason for her to be sending him post. He didn’t think she’d ever sent post before, not that wasn’t a card to her parents or Mark’s parents or something she’d bought online and was returning. For a moment he honestly had to think about whether or not he was an online retailer. Then he realised how ludicrous that train of thought was, shook his head as if to rid himself of the thought entirely, and tore at the envelope.

He walked further through into the sitting room, vaguely aware that Chandler had said something from where he was standing in the kitchen, and struggled with the apparently insurmountable obstacle of paper and glue. At least he knew no one had tampered with it. Not that people tampered with his post often. Not as far as he knew, anyway, but all that was just runaway speculation because he’d just realised that the thing weighed heavier in his hand than a simple letter or card should. Kent got halfway through the tear and took an ungainly moment to peer inside. That didn’t tell him much, except that sometimes he might have stupid ideas and he should probably just have a proper look.

The photographs fell into his hand before the letter, the heavier paper falling free of the thin folded explanation. It was a testament to how long Kent had been a policeman that his first thought was, _Oh, God, blackmail_ , even when it was one of his best mates who was the sender. He clambered at the letter, dropping the decimated envelope on the nearby desk, and shook out the folds.

_Kent, Joe,  
_ _(are we going with Joe? Might as well, you can’t tell me off for it at this distance!)_

_Do excuse the terrible handwriting, this pen’s on its way out I think. But it’s the only one I can find so let’s make do._

_I’m sure you’ve noticed what this letter’s about. You’re a detective and you’re not blind; you probably looked at the photos before you read this. You did, didn’t you? Bet you’re confused now._

_We were looking through the photos and I thought I’d send a select few over to you. Now, before you panic (and I know you will, I know you and I can tell Joe’s probably the same), let me just say: don’t fucking panic. We seem to have (inadvertently, I’ll admit) taken all precautions. Neither of you are front and centre, no one has seen these except for the photographer who is bound by contract not to distribute them (and I have no idea why he’d want to, you’re just a couple more faces in the crowd to him! You two aren’t the centre of the universe you know ;) !) and Mark even suggested sending them by post so that there’s no electronic trail. That, and you’d probably feel better having them anyway. We can delete the original files if it’d make you feel better. (Worrywort.)_

_Anyway, if you’re interested, there should be five. Count and check, just to make sure the postman didn’t take a fancy to them. (I know you will, Em. You’re so predictable.) I would have thought there would be more of you two together, but no, you did a pretty good job of avoiding cameras. Though you’ve spent twenty years doing that, haven’t you? Not sure about him. After the things you’ve been through, I wouldn’t blame him for hating the sound of a shutter. (Yes, I know. You know I know. Stop pulling that face.)_

_If you want (ha! You, wanting photos. I don’t even know why I’m bothering) there are a couple of us with you, Em. I’m sure you remember those being taken. If not, I need to have a word with you about your priorities._

_Everything that’s not incriminating is going on Facebook after we’re done curating. Just FYI._

_Love to you both,  
_ _Jess & Mark_

_P.S. Em, that picture of you eating cake very inelegantly is not incriminating, it’s embarrassing, which means it is not exempt. Prepare yourself_.

_P.P.S Joe, you’re safe. We’ve not quite got around to embarrassing you yet. ;)_

Although there was actually something slightly reminiscent of blackmail about it, just a little, Kent smiled at the parting shots. He weighed up the photographs in his hand, not looking at them, and wondered when he was going to start getting sarcastic notifications. He’d have to disable them on his phone. That was definitely not something he wanted popping up at work—he had enough trouble keeping the lot of them out of the fringes of his business anyway. He didn’t really need them seeing him managing to get icing on the end of his nose.

He folded up the page back into thirds, following the creased folds, and tucked it behind the photos.They were the sorts of things that you wouldn’t think twice about, not really, not if you didn’t already know. Nothing overt. Not that they ever went for anything overt outside the walls they were currently stood inside. Well, hadn’t before. Kent still didn’t quite believe they’d done it. Another quick flick through the pile said that there wasn’t any pictorial evidence that would remind him, or Chandler, or anyone else. He was far from disappointed about that; he didn’t need a reminder, not really, and even though they’d felt comfortable enough on the night Kent doubted that they wanted any pictures falling into the wrong hands. Especially not anyone in the team—they’d never hear the end of it. Riley might have not believed him but even she wouldn’t be able to resist a corroborating photograph.

God, she might even have tried to _frame_ it.

Each time they were just another pair of faces in a wider shot, two characters in a tableau. Nevertheless Kent could pick them out immediately, like some sort of visual version of that cocktail party effect thing. Recognition in a sea of the unfamiliar. (He’d been doing that to spot Chandler for years; he noticed him as soon as he arrived, as soon as he left, as soon as something in his demeanor shifted. He could do it now, with a single glance, and spot the line of his back, the cut of his coat. He didn’t even really need to see his face, although that always helped.)

There was one with them stood on the corner of a crowd, almost at the edge of a frame, one of them saying something that made the other smile—Kent didn’t know if he liked the fact he couldn’t tell which of them was doing which. Another saw them on an opposite corner, sat at the end of a pew with Maggie, hidden mostly behind an array of impressive hats. One had been taken at dusk (which must have been quite late, considering it was August and it felt like it was only night for a couple of hours at a time) and they’d both been looking at the camera; Kent had never been unnerved by himself before, but that one managed it. A couple were just candids, like stills from a film, but knowing Jess, Kent knew why she’d picked them. She’d always liked anything that was slightly wistful.There was one where they were talking to someone (Mark, probably) and Chandler actually looked animated with Kent glancing up at him; in the last they weren’t even looking at each other, they were turned in entirely opposite directions, but there was something about their shoulders. Jess wouldn’t miss that.

(Kent wouldn’t admit it, he he wouldn’t miss it either. He didn’t.)

‘Joe?’ he called, and although he expected himself to sound apprehensive, he didn’t. (Not quite.) 

There was no word that came in reply, just an inquisitive _hm_ -like noise, and Kent turned his head to try and catch Chandler’s eye. 

‘You’re probably going to want to see these.’

Chandler appeared, depositing a cup of tea on the counter before he slipped across the threshold towards where Kent stood.

‘Why?’

He sounded a little more apprehensive that time, although his searching expression twitched into something amused as he noted that Kent wasn’t overly worried. Kent smiled a little and gestured towards him with the papers in his hand.

‘So we can decide what we’re going to do with them.’

Chandler cocked his head to one side as he approached—just slightly, but enough for Kent to catch it and for one side of his mouth to twitch into a little bit more of a smile. It was one of those things they knew about each other, little triggers. Kent let a canine catch on the edge of his lip as Chandler closed the last bit of distance, pointedly looking over his shoulder at what was in his hands instead of his mouth. Still, Kent knew he’d noticed. He always did.

‘What do you think about this?’

‘It’s not newspaper clippings, is it?’ Chandler said, coming to a stop behind Kent and winding his arms around his middle.He rested his chin on the tenderest bit of Kent’s shoulder, peering at the first in the pile of photos. ‘Oh.’ 

‘Yeah, _oh_.’ Kent leant back into Chandler’s touch. ‘Jess sent them. Here’s the letter.’

Chandler reached with one hand to take the paper from him but left the other splayed flat across Kent’s stomach. 

There was a pause when Chandler picked up his chin, then: ‘She needs a new pen.’ 

‘Yeah, she’s noticed. Shall we send one?’

Chandler made a noncommittal noise, an answer without much meaning, but it vibrated along Kent’s spine and he didn’t mind. It was ridiculous, really, them stood there like that in the middle of the sitting room for God knows how long while Chandler scanned the words. It wasn’t the handwriting, he’d be all right with that, even with Jess’s dodgy cursive-print hybrid. The courses and the years reading witness statements had sorted that out. Maybe it was just that time felt much slower when measured by the beat of Chandler’s pulse instead of the tick of Kent’s wristwatch.

Kent let it creep on anyway. 

‘She’s very familiar,’ Chandler said after a moment. Kent thought he just might be able to feel the ghost of a smile against the shell of his ear.

‘Always has been.’ He laughed, gentle. ‘To a fault, sometimes.’ He tried to shrug but Chandler was heavy. ‘She’s blagged her way out of enough speeding tickets.’

Chandler huffed and Kent chuckled, letting Chandler keep ahold of him even though his grip was slipping.

‘Not our boys, though,’ he added, as an afterthought.

(At least, he was pretty sure that was the case. He didn’t think Jess had driven a vehicle through Whitechapel in her life. Old country lanes were where she’d earned her sea legs. Probably where she’d learnt to round corners like she did, too.) 

‘That’s something.’

Chandler’s voice rumbled in his ear, the breath he took pressed against his back. Words trickled in from the kitchen, the vague hum of the radio; the hour began with the pips, as it always did, and Kent leant his head back onto Chandler’s shoulder.

‘What are we doing, then?’ he asked, reaching to pull the letter from Chandler’s hand. 

‘Keep them.’

‘What?’ Kent almost laughed; Chandler sounded oddly pleased, close to grateful. ‘Where, in a box under the bed?’

Chandler smiled, and pressed a kiss to Kent’s cheek. ‘For now.’

*

The air from the open window licked at his skin. 

It was one of his more nonsensical habits, but sometimes, when he couldn’t sleep, Kent just opened one of the first floor windows and held out one hand, letting the summer rain trickle through his fingers. They were reaching the end now, he couldn’t call it summer rain for much longer. Autumn drizzle, winter sleet. Time marched on. 

How long was it now? A week, a week and a half? Kent couldn’t tell if he distance was geographical or temporal but it felt much longer ago than that. Though that was only how he felt sat there in the low light of the second bedroom; once or twice, at the station, Kent had left as if it had only been minutes between Chandler trying to organize the team into some sort of productivity and Chandler sliding his grip across his fingers and tilting his face close in the middle of a crowd.

Kent would have pinched himself, but the slip of rain between his fingers proved much the same thing. That, and the protest of a muscle in his arm. The room was only small, the bed oversized and more or less pushed up against the wall, and the angle from where he’d perched on the duvet was extreme. Kent drew his hand back inside and gave his arm a stern glance (as if that would stop the smarting) before wrapping it around his bent knees. The rain pattered on, an incessant friend, and Kent listened. 

It was almost as good at distracting him as the radio.

There was a knock on the door. Kent knew it wasn’t completely shut, it always made too loud a click for him to even bother, so the gentle creak that sounded through the room wasn’t a shock. Kent turned, resting his chin on the knee he’d drawn up to his chest, and met Chandler’s tentative glance with an inquisitive one of his own.

He smiled, lopsided. ‘Hello.’

Chandler didn’t look so sure.

‘Sorry,’ he said, ruffling the back of his hair as he stood in the doorway. ‘I know you don’t—well, you know. You were just away for a long time. I, um. Well. I wanted to make sure you were all right.’

Kent didn’t know what to say to that. He knew what he felt about it, the feeling welled up in his throat, but he didn’t quite have the words. 

Chandler smiled, slightly forced although Kent could still see the honesty in it, and gestured somewhere vaguely over his shoulder as he turned back towards the darkness of the landing. ‘I’ll go.’

For a moment, the only thought that came to Kent’s mind was _Don’t._

‘Joe,’ he called, almost at the last minute. The house was empty save the two of them but he still kept his voice low.

The taller man stopped and turned without a moment’s hesitation, his light eyes searching. Kent pulled his knee closer to his chest.

‘Would you… would you stay?’

Chandler didn’t move forward immediately, although he didn’t move away either.

‘If you don’t mind, I mean,’ Kent managed, stumbling over his words a bit. ‘I know, work in the morning. Sorry.’

‘No, sorry—’ Chandler shook his head and stepped into the room, shutting the door behind him with a gentle click. ‘I mean, if you don’t mind.’

Kent chuckled as he turned back towards the window and watched the raindrops chase each other down the window pane. ‘I asked, didn’t I?’ 

They were a right pair. What were they apologizing for? Chronically awkward, the both of them, but Kent didn’t really mind as the bed dipped and shifted with Chandler’s movements. He turned to him anyway with the best smile he could muster in that state, glad that as he settled he was reassuringly warm at his side, a great and welcome change compared to the cool drops that still dripped from his fingers.

Chandler sat up next to him, finger-combing his hair. Kent was suddenly hyperaware of the dampness of his skin, the apparent absurdity of what he’d been doing; he swiped his hand along his thigh, the fabric wicking away the rainwater, and even that didn’t feel adequate until Chandler touched at his spine, the back of his neck. When had Chandler become a safe pair of hands? Kent didn’t know, he’d bet that Chandler didn’t think it was true at all. But it was, it _was_ true, because the significance that Kent hadn’t jumped when Chandler had knocked gently on the door wasn’t lost on him. Something somewhere in his subconscious knew he was all right with him, and Kent didn’t want to argue with it. Logic wasn’t always linear. So he didn’t, and he leant against Chandler’s side instead. Solid, familiar; Chandler pressed his mouth against the side of his head and Kent sighed, running his fingers along the inside of Chandler’s arm.

He opened with another sigh (as if they didn’t already have enough of those.) ‘Sorry I woke you.’

‘I don’t mind,’ Chandler said as he raised his head.

‘I’m still sorry.’ Kent shrugged and tipped his head to rest on the crest of Chandler’s shoulder. ‘I’m sorry I’m up, actually. I’m not _against_ sleep, as odd as that might seem.’ 

Kent could feel the gentle laugh as much as hear it. He smiled and shut his eyes for a moment, testing. Nothing took him, not even a remnant or inkling of sleep, and he settled for counting the beats of Chandler’s pulse under his fingers. Time wrapped in a pulse. Just as good as any.

Chandler cleared his throat. ‘This is the first time since…’

‘Yeah, since.’

Kent didn’t know why they were embarrassed to say it. They smiled at each other instead, the same memory occurring to them both at the same time, the same tune. Kent had a ridiculous urge to hum it, but decided against it and turned back to watching through the window, fingers gentle across Chandler’s pulse, shoulders pressed close and even closer on each exhale.

He sighed, heavy and sarcastic. ‘It is galling in the extreme.’

Kent started laughing before he’d even finished the sentence, the overdone level tone not adhering properly to his words. Chandler smiled, and although Kent only saw out of the corner of his eye, it made his own smile wider.Chandler drew his hand backwards, gentle, and settled with his fingers linked through Kent’s. He stroked his thumb across the back of Kent’s hand, an unconscious movement that made Kent bite his lip and wonder how on earth he’d made it to here without toppling down thanks to weak knees. 

‘There’s been nothing…’ Chandler went quiet, as if he couldn’t choose the right term. Kent couldn’t help him; he didn’t know which word was best, either, although he understood the sentiment. ‘Has there?’

‘No. Sometimes you just have these nights, don’t you? I’ve probably been getting too much sleep lately.’

‘There’s not an allocation limit.’ 

Kent let out a laugh—not a proper one, just a quick exhale of air, but it almost seemed like that was what the night suited so he left it at that. Chandler didn’t let go of his hand, didn’t stop the gentle touch of his thumb, and after a moment of watching it chuck it down outside Kent turned to look at him. Not for any particular reason, just because he wanted to. His eyes looked soft and warm in the low light, for all they could go hard and icy. If Kent hadn’t already, he would have fallen in love right then and there.

‘What…’ Chandler trailed off. ‘What do you do? I mean—these nights, when you’re up.’

‘Tea.’ Kent nodded towards the mostly empty mug he’d left on the unused bedside table, the only evidence that anyone had been in the room since Chandler relocated across the landing. ‘Think, not that that’s good for me. Piss about on the internet—picked up that habit from Mansell.’ They both laughed at that, half hidden in the moonlight, and Kent settled for gesturing out the window with his free hand. ‘Watch, mostly.’

_And wait_ , he almost added, but Chandler’s smile was soft and sincere and derailing. 

‘Not that there’s much to look at from here. Next door’s wall, most of the time. Though occasionally a cat pops up.’ Kent stretched his neck to see although he knew it wasn’t going to do any good. ‘The ginger tabby from three doors down, I think, but it’s difficult to see from here.’

‘How do you know it’s theirs?’

‘I’m a policeman. I conducted a door-to-door before I moved in.'

Chandler did laugh at that, properly, with the smile that bared his teeth. It was rare, that one, and Kent wanted to memorize it. He never quite felt that he had, no matter how hard he tried. 

‘Anyway,’ he said, tightening his grip on Chandler’s hand for a moment, ‘it hasn’t shown its face tonight. Too wet for it, I suspect.’

Kent had almost hoped, at first, that something about the rain would make him want to go back to bed. It had when he was a child, and there had been thunderstorms; even Erica couldn’t have convinced him to leave the warm and dry. But he wasn’t a child anymore, and this wasn’t a thunderstorm, and Kent was very much awake. Even with Chandler sat next to him, his features almost alarmingly gentle and not entirely dissimilar to how he’d been when he’d been a little drunk, when he’d decided to take up boxing again. Kent shoved down the urge to reach and touch at the same spot where that Brooks bloke had bruised Chandler’s cheek, cut his lip. He still wished he could have done it then. 

Chandler watched him looking, eyes affectionate, but didn’t say a word. Kent could see that a he had a few that he might want to say, a few thoughts that could fight their way out given enough chance, but there wasn’t enough of that to go around. He brought Kent’s hand to his mouth instead, brushed a kiss over his knuckles, and Kent didn’t even try to stop the small hums of appreciation from curling in the base of his throat.

They still didn’t say anything.

(Kent didn’t think they needed to.)

A car somewhere on the street, probably behind them, started blaring something that would have felt at home in the nineties. Kent laughed—typical. Nothing bloody changed, did it?

Chandler gave him an eloquent look, or at least as eloquent as one could be at two in the morning, anyway. Kent shrugged, the ghost of a smile on half of his mouth, and although he let Chandler keep his hand he turned his attention back to the scene out the window. It was nothing compared to Chandler, to trying to decipher and decode and revel in every little movement in his face that betrayed the fact that yes, he loved him, but he couldn’t help it. Chandler’s eyes were too bright, too aware to let Kent’s roam over his face without comment.

He could tell, though. He hadn’t, at first, neither of them had but they learned. (They were good at that.)

Chandler wordlessly wormed a hand under Kent’s jumper, skating his fingertips across his ribs until Kent shivered and turned closer into him. The open window didn’t help, either, but neither of them moved to pull it closed. It was too comfortable to shift very far, although Kent tucked his nose into the curve of Chandler’s neck. He smelled like their sheets, cotton-warm.

A jaw-cracking yawn took Kent by surprise.

Chandler smiled, pressing closer, and rested his chin on Kent’s head.

‘Bed?’

Kent made a disagreeable noise and rubbed his cheek on Chandler’s shoulder. ‘That was no promise, you know.’

‘No, but it’d be nice.’ 

‘Are you saying you miss me?’ 

Chandler sliced him an embarrassed look even as Kent’s face creased into a warm grin. Another wave of rain pattered against the open window, spilling onto the windowsill; cooler air seeped in, foreshadowing something cold and grim. Winters always were. The nights would start drawing in soon. Imperceptible, at first, but they would.

He hadn’t noticed they’d fallen silent until Chandler nudged the side of his head with another dry kiss.

‘Yes,’ he said, quiet and low, only to Kent even though there was no one else to hear. ‘I sort of do.’

‘You’re daft,’ Kent murmured back as he slid a hand to rest on Chandler’s side, settle his fingers between his ribs, feeling for his breaths. He was warm.  

Chandler hadn’t moved, just slid his hand across Kent’s spine as he whispered, ‘A little bit.’

Kent’s mouth twitched into a smile. They were terrible, weren’t they? Absolutely hopeless. Still, he’d seen Miles and Judy do some soppy things in his time, and they seemed all right. They got on with things. They carried on. Kent felt almost as if he was swimming in sodden clothes, stuck, when faced with Chandler’s tender moments. He never wanted to leave them.

(Not that he really minded. He reveled in the tone of Chandler’s voice.)

With great effort, like a ship coming about, Kent heaved himself away from Chandler’s side and leaned up to press a kiss to his jaw and another to his mouth (he couldn’t help himself). Chandler’s hand caught at his hip as he moved, a shadow of a grip, and Kent smiled at him as he got to his feet and the touch slipped.  

‘Come on then,’ he said, collecting the mug so he wouldn’t forget to do something about it in the morning. ‘I’ll humour you.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, and thanks again for being such a lovely fandom! I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed the writing. I'd love to hear from you in the comments and kudos! :) x


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